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RUSSELL SAGE 
FOUNDATION 



HOUSING REFORM 

A HAND-BOOK FOR 

PRACTICAL USE 

IN AMERICAN 

CITIES 

BY 

LAWRENCE VEILLER 



NEW YORK 
CHARITIES PUBLICATION 
COMMITTEE .... MCMX 






Copyright, 19 lo, by 
The Russell Sage Foundation 



PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. 
PHILADELPHIA 



©CU259^51 



HOUSING REFORM 



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FOREWORD 

BY ROBERT W. de FOREST 

THIS book is a practical handbook on tene- 
ment reform in America. Public spirited 
citizens of every American city are asking 
themselves what to do to prevent in their commu- 
nity the housing evils that have grown up elsewhere 
and to remedy those that have come into existence 
around their own homes. This book is intended 
to answer that question. There is no more of 
theory about it than is essential to intelligent 
conclusion and effective action. It has been 
written at the instance of the Russell Sage Founda- 
tion by the person who is most competent, by 
knowledge and experience, to answer that ques- 
tion. 

Lawrence Veiller has made a lifelong study of 
this subject. As a settlement worker in New York 
he acquired an intimate knowledge of how the 
wage earners of that city live. He was secretary 
and practical director of the Tenement House 
Committee of the New York Charity Organization 
Society when it was first organized in 1898. He 
became secretary of the New York State Tenement 
House Commission of 1900, which drafted the 
present Tenement Law for cities of the first class 

vii 



FOREWORD 

and created the Tenement Department of New 
York City. And as First Deputy Tenement 
Commissioner during the two years after the 
Department came into existence he had a large 
part in the initial enforcement of that law. 

The last chapter in the book contains a collec- 
tion of negative ''Don'ts.'' All the previous 
chapters deal with affirmative ''Do's." 

If I were to emphasize any particular line of 
affirmative action in housing reform, it would be 
the prevention of the tenement disease before any 
city begins to suffer from it. 

We Americans have an unhappy faculty of not 
remembering until after we have forgotten, of 
not beginning to conserve our resources and save 
our forests until after we have lost them. But 
we are surely practical enough to profit by ex- 
perience. And experience applied to housing 
reform establishes the proposition which should 
be printed in large type that No growing 

AMERICAN CITY, HOWEVER FREE FROM TENE- 
MENTS NOW, CAN AFFORD TO BE WITHOUT BUILD- 
ING REGULATIONS TO PREVENT DARK ROOMS 

AND UNSANITARY CONDITIONS. There is no hard- 
ship to anyone in so regulating the future building 
of all houses intended to contain three or more 
families as to ensure an open space in the rear, a 
window for every room, opening either on the street 
or an open rear or an open court proportioned 
to height, also water supply, sewer connection 
and a separate toilet. There can be no intelligent 

viii 



FOREWORD 

opposition to such a regulation, be it by state law 
or city ordinance. Such regulation, however 
much tenement evils may have come to exist, 
will safeguard the future, even if some of the past 
is lost. It is in the line of least resistance and 
greatest accomplishment. 

There is nothing inherently objectionable in 
the tenement as a type of city dwelling; that is, 
in a multiple house intended to be occupied by 
three or more families living independently. 
The objection lies in permitting them to be built 
without proper regulation. It is the wellnigh 
universal form in many European cities. It is 
likely to be increasingly the form in American 
cities. 

There comes a time in the growth of every city 
when it begins to feel the need of building laws 
to guard against fire, and appropriate enactment 
is made. If destruction to life and property by 
disease were as spectacular as destruction by 
fire, protection against disease-breeding houses 
would precede protection against those that spread 
only fire. Both kinds of protection are essential 
and cannot be ensured too early in a city's de- 
velopment. 



IX 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword, by Robert W. de Forest . . . vii 

I 

Housing Evils and their Significance ... 3 

II 

Some Popular Fallacies 15 

III 

Congestion and Overcrowding . . . . .27 

IV 

The Housing Problem a Three- Fold One . . 39 

V 

How to Start a Movement for Housing Reform 49 

VI 

The Essentials of a Housing Investigation . . 55 

VII 

Model Tenements and their Limitations . . 63 

VIII 

Municipal Tenements and Municipal Regulation . 77 

xi 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Essential Principles of a Housing Law ... 89 

X 

What a Housing Law should G^ntain . . .101 

XI 
The Enforcement of Housing Laws . . . .123 

XII 
How to Secure Legislative Reforms . . . -151 

XIII 
The Field of Private Effort 171 

XIV 

A Chapter of "Don' ts" 193 

Sample Schedules for Housing Investiga- 
tions 199 

Index 207 



xu 



I 

HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR 
SIGNIFICANCE 



I 

HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR 
SIGNIFICANCE 

EVERY American city has its housing problem. 
While in no two cities the same, in all 
there are certain underlying conditions 
which find common expression. Bad housing con- 
ditions generally first manifest themselves when 
several families are found living in a dwelling in- 
tended originally for a single family. Then, with 
the increase in population, there comes the building 
of regular tenement houses usually before any 
restrictions have been thought of by the com- 
munity. Rapidly from this point develop the 
evils of cellar dwellings, unsanitary privies, lack 
of drainage, inadequate water supply, filthy out- 
premises, defective plumbing, dark rooms and 
halls, overcrowding, the taking in of lodgers,, 
congestion, excessive rents, the sweating evil and 
those other manifestations of modern social life 
which are too often seen in our large cities. 

The causes for these evils are not to be found in 
any one thing but are to be traced through a va- 
riety of influences operating through considerable 
periods of time. Some of the evils are peculiar 

3 



HOUSING REFORM 

to a single community, but most of them sooner 
or later are found in all cities. The chief under- 
lying factor which stands out in every community 
is that they are, in nearly every case, due to 
neglect and ignorance. Neglect on the part of 
the community, failure of its citizens to recognize 
evil tendencies as they develop; dangerous igno- 
rance on the part of citizens and public officials 
of what is going on within the city's gates — a 
feeling of safety and of confidence that all must 
be right because they see little that is wrong, that 
things cannot be bad as long as they are hidden; 
a false civic pride which believes that everything 
in one's own city is the best, a dangerous sort of 
apathy content to leave things as they are, a 
laissei faire policy which brings forth fruit of 
unrighteousness. 

Invariably accompanying these two causes, 
but to a lesser degree, is found a third, greed. 
Greed on the part of those persons who for the 
sake of a larger profit on their investments, are 
willing to traffic in human lives, to sacrifice the 
health and welfare of countless thousands. 

It is only in comparatively recent years that 
the community as a whole has been alive to the 
importance of right housing conditions, and the 
far-reaching influence of wrong ones. With the 
changed view that has come of late with regard 
to much of our modern charitable and social 
effort, emphasis has come to be placed more and 
more upon the environment in which people live, 

4 



HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 

and less upon those hereditary traits of character 
which social workers of earlier years were wont 
to observe. 

It is not so very many years since we were told 
that it was practically useless to attempt to 
improve the condition of the poor; that their 
poverty was caused by their own vices, by defects 
of character transmitted from father to son, from 
generation to generation, by faults which were in 
the blood, hereditary traits and instincts impos- 
sible to overcome. The theory that tuberculosis 
was an incurable hereditary disease prevailed 
with equal force about the same period. We 
know now, however, that both these views were 
erroneous; that poverty too is a germ disease, 
contagious even at times; that it thrives amid the 
same conditions as those under which the germs 
of tuberculosis flourish — in darkness, filth and 
sordid surroundings; and that when the light 
has once been let in the first step towards its cure 
has been taken. 

Environment leaves its ineffaceable records on 
the souls, minds and bodies of men, there to be 
read by all able to understand. A child living 
its early years in dark rooms, without sunlight 
or fresh air, does not grow up to be a normal 
healthy person, but is anaemic, weak, sickly, like 
a plant grown in the dark. He is handicapped in 
his school life; his earning capacity is diminished 
and his resisting power weakened. It is not of 
such material that strong nations are made. Im- 

5 



HOUSING REFORM 

provement of social conditions, as indeed of all 
others, starts with the improvement of domestic 
life. When there are no homes there will be no 
nation. 

While every American city has its housing 
problem, fortunately but few cities have as yet a 
tenement house problem. The two are quite 
distinct and should be carefully differentiated. 
Moreover, no city in America, except New York, 
need have a tenement house problem. The few 
that have can easily solve their problems at their 
present stage of development, if they will be ac- 
tive and vigilant. 

It should be recognized at the outset that the 
normal method of housing the working population 
in our American cities is in small houses, each 
house occupied by a separate family, often with a 
small bit of land, with privacy for all, and with a 
secure sense of individuality and opportunity for 
real domestic life. Under no other method can 
we expect American institutions to be main- 
tained. It is useless to expect a conservative 
point of view in the workingman, if his home is 
but three or four room.s in some huge building in 
which dwell from twenty to thirty other families, 
and this home is his only from month to month. 
Where a man has a home of his own he has every 
incentive to be economical and thrifty, to take 
his part in the duties of citizenship, to be a real 
sharer in government. Democracy was not pred- 

6 



HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 

icated upon a country made up of tenement 
dwellers, nor can it so survive. 

It is in such small houses that the great mass 
of the working people are housed in most of our 
cities. It is so in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, 
Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, St. 
Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indian- 
apolis, San Francisco, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and 
in fact in all the larger cities except New York. 
In many of these cities, however, several families 
live in one building, in some cities there are 
frequently two families to a house, in others three, 
and in others even more. In a few, the tenement 
house system has begun to develop; and in all of 
those mentioned there are found individual tene- 
ment houses, similar to those of New York — 
large buildings four or five stories high, with 
several families on each floor, and with all the 
usual features of the multiple dwelling. But in 
none of these cities, as yet, has this become the 
dominant type of building. In that lies the 
hopeful element of the situation. 

The conditions in New York are without 
parallel in the civilized world. In no city of 
Europe, not in Naples nor in Rome, neither in 
London nor in Paris, neither in Berlin, Vienna 
nor Buda Pesth, not in Constantinople nor in St. 
Petersburgh, not in ancient Edinburgh nor modern 
Glasgow, not in heathen Canton nor Bombay are 
to be found such conditions as prevail in modern, 

7 



HOUSING REFORM 

enlightened, twentieth century, Christian New 
York. 

In no other city is the mass of the working 
population housed as it is in New York, in tali 
tenement houses, extending up into the air fifty 
or sixty feet, and stretching for miles in every 
direction as far as the eye can reach. In no other 
city are there the same appalling conditions with 
regard to lack of light and air in the homes of 
the poor. In no other city is there so great con- 
gestion and overcrowding. In no other city do 
the poor so suffer from excessive rents; in no city 
are the conditions of city life so complex. No- 
where are the evils of modern life so varied, 
nowhere are the problems so difficult of solution. 

If New York is so abnormal it may well be 
asked of what benefit to other communities are 
its problems; what lessons can others learn from 
New York's experience? New York, cosmopoli- 
tan in its population, is equally cosmopolitan in 
its social problems. Here will be found the prob- 
lems of all other American cities, sometimes only 
in the germ, often, however, developed to an 
extent not dreamt of elsewhere. New York is 
the "horrible example." It is the startling 
crystallization in brick and mortar of the potential 
housing evils of every other American city. It 
typifies the kind of city that other American 
cities may develop into under the influence of 
similar forces, unless timely effort is put forth to 
prevent such development. 

8 



HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 

In 1835, 74 years ago, New York had a popula- 
tion of about 270,000 and was then a city of the 
size of Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington to-day. 
New York then had no tenement house system; 
it had then no miles of congested streets, no lodger 
evil, no overcrowding, no social problems of great 
magnitude. 

The homes of its working people were at that 
time small one-story and two-story houses, 
each family living in its separate house, as they do 
to-day in Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington, 
cities of the same size. Had New York been 
told at that time that conditions would ever be 
such as they are to-day, who would have given 
credence to such wild statements? And yet what 
reason is there to expect that Detroit, Milwaukee, 
Washington and similar cities may not in time 
develop as New York has, and exhibit seventy- 
five years from now similar conditions to plague 
future communities with social problems of similar 
or even greater difficulty? Who can doubt that 
the tendencies and forces at work in New York 
in these past seventy-five years are as surely at 
work to-day in other American cities? 

In the experience of New York may be found a 
lesson for every other city. Here, exhibited in 
striking form, are to be seen the evils that have 
resulted from sixty years' neglect of housing 
conditions, the failure not merely to anticipate 
the city's future development and to provide 
safeguards against evil tendencies, but, far worse, 

9 



HOUSING REFORM 

failure to recognize and remedy evils long existent, 
and further failure of the efforts at amelioration 
to keep pace with the new evils fast developing. 
So that, notwithstanding all the effort put forth, 
notwithstanding the great accomplishments of 
recent years, housing conditions in New York to- 
day are worse than they were sixty years ago. 

Through these causes, we have to-day the 
tenement house system prevalent throughout New 
York as the chief means of housing the greater 
part of the city's population, over two-thirds of 
the people living in multiple dwellings; we have 
to-day over 100,000 separate tenement houses; we 
have a city built up of four and five-story buildings, 
instead of two-story and three-story ones; we 
have over 10,000 tenement houses of the hopeless 
and discredited ''dumb-bell" type with narrow 
"air-shafts'' furnishing neither sunlight nor fresh 
air to the thousands of people living in the rooms 
opening on them; we have over 20,000 tenement 
houses of the older type in which most of the rooms 
are without light or ventilation; we have over 
100,000 dark unventilated rooms without even a 
window to an adjoining room; we have 80,000 
buildings, housing nearly 3,000,000 people, so 
constructed as to be a standing menace to the 
community in the event of fire, most of them built 
with wooden stairs, wooden halls and wooden 
floors, and thousands built entirely of wood. 

Over a million people have no bathing facilities 
in their homes; while even a greater number are 

10 



HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 

limited to the use of sanitary conveniences in 
common with other families, without proper 
privacy; over a quarter of a million people had in 
the year 1900, no other sanitary conveniences than 
antiquated yard privies; and even to-day 2000 
of these privy sinks still remain, many of them 
located in densely populated districts, a source of 
danger to all in the neighborhood, facilitating 
the spread of contagious disease through the 
medium of the common house-fly. 

Here we have conditions of congestion of pop- 
ulation unparalleled elsewhere in the civilized 
world. In one small portion of Manhattan Island, 
the district south of Fourteenth street and east of 
Broadway, dwell over 500,000 human beings, a 
population in itself greater than the entire popu- 
lation of any other American city except Chicago, 
Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston and Baltimore; 
a population greater, indeed, than the population 
of each of the following states: Arizona, Delaware, 
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, 
New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, 
Utah, Vermont and Wyoming. 

New York may well serve as a warning to other 
communities of what may come from present 
tendencies if allowed to continue unchecked. 
If you do not want such conditions in your city, 
there is but one way to avoid them. See to it 
that you do not get them. Be alert and vigilant. 
Study present and future tendencies. Profit by 
New York's mistakes. Keep your city a city 

1 1 



HOUSING REFORM 

of homes, not a city of tenements. It is all pos- 
sible, if you act in time. There is a time when all 
errors can be remedied with comparatively little 
loss; do not let that time go by. 

No housing evils are necessary; none need be 
tolerated. Where they exist they are always a 
reflection upon the intelligence, rightmindedness 
and moral tone of the community. 



12 



II 

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 



II 

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 

TO properly understand the housing problem 
it is necessary for many of us to free our 
minds from a number of misconceptions — 
popular fallacies — which seem to possess a subtle 
power of impression and which prevail far more 
easily than the truth. Chief among these is the 
belief that the poor are of a different race from 
the rich; that they have not the same impulses, 
the same vices, the same frailties, the same virtues; 
that they are a totally distinct class, who, when 
they are in misfortune or in misery, are so because 
of their own fault; that in some way they possess 
a natural faculty for getting into trouble; that 
intemperance among the rich is a disease, among 
the poor a deliberate vice; that the poor should 
always immediately recognize the wisdom of the 
advice offered by those who would not dare to 
proffer similar suggestions to more prosperous 
friends, and that failure to take such advice is a 
sign of wicked wilfulness. Probably no one thing 
more clearly indicates the kinship of the rich and 
the poor than the ingrained unwillingness of both 
to follow the advice of others; unless, perhaps, 

15 



HOUSING REFORM 

the failure of both alike to realize that ''The life 
is more than meat and the body than raiment." 
The rich and the poor are indeed alike in all 
essential particulars — and that is the trouble. 
Were they different, we might with reason hope 
that ethical principles to which one class has 
failed to respond might indeed appeal to the other. 
That failure is the failure of humanity in general, 
and not of the poor alone. 

A kindred fallacy is that the poor do not want 
good housing conditions; that there is no use in 
providing improved dwellings for them; that good 
homes will not be appreciated and that the 
majority of the working people prefer to live in 
squalor and in sordid surroundings. Nothing 
could be farther from the facts. That there are 
individuals in every community who prefer to 
live in squalor is unquestionably true, but the 
majority of the poor not only welcome improved 
housing conditions but ardently desire them. 
One of the most pathetic things in modern city 
life is the constant striving on their part to improve 
living surroundings. That so many triumph over 
their adverse environment is everlastingly to 
their credit. 

Another popular fallacy is the view that it is 
only the people who need to be reformed and not 
the physical, industrial and social conditions under 
which they live. If one still adheres to the doc- 
trine of original sin and the innate depravity of 
the human race, it is conceivable that such views 

i6 



SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 

should be held. No one, however, who has worked 
for even a slight period of time among the poor 
has any doubt of what it is that needs reformation 
first. It will generally be found that when the 
conditions surrounding the lives of the poor have 
been changed the people have, in large measure, 
changed with them. 

We all live up to our environment more or less, 
like the beggar in the bed of the king, and it is 
certainly the first duty of government "To make 
it as hard as possible for men to go wrong and as 
easy as possible for them to go right'' — to remove 
the hindering things that cramp and weaken both 
body and soul. 

Deep-rooted, too, is the belief that the poor 
like to be dirty, instanced always by the oft- 
repeated story that the common use of bathtubs 
among this class of society is for the storage of 
coal. No story, I imagine, has been repeated 
more often and none has less basis of fact — a 
hasty generalization from a single instance. 
Perhaps my failure during sixteen years' constant 
experience of tenement conditions in New York, 
throughout all parts of it, to observe instances 
of this nature has been due to the failure to find 
the bathtub, an institution that it has seldom been 
my good fortune to encounter in the ordinary 
tenement house. When one considers that few 
of the tenement population possess so great a 
luxury as a bathtub, and that it is their custom 
to buy coal by the pail because of their inability 
2 " 17 



HOUSING REFORM 

to pay for a larger quantity at one time, the story 
falls to the ground. 

Over against this impressionistic picture one 
should, in all fairness, place those countless others, 
which stand out with photographic clearness, of 
the tenement house mother laboriously carrying 
in pail after pail of water from the one faucet in 
the public hall, heating it in various receptacles 
on the kitchen stove and giving child after child 
its bath in an inconvenient wooden wash tub. 

The most emphatic proof of the desire of the 
great mass of the tenement population for physical 
cleanliness, is furnished by the experience of 
various public baths. A striking instance is found 
in the case of the People's Baths. Founded in 
1 89 1 and located partly in the crowded Italian quar- 
ter and partly on the edge of the commercial dis- 
trict and therefore somewhat at a disadvantage, the 
number of baths taken increased from 59,440 
in 1892 to 135,599 i^ 1908, and this notwithstand- 
ing the fact that a fee of five cents is charged for 
each bath. Few people realize the efforts made 
by most of the tenement house population to keep 
clean under the most adverse conditions. When 
all the water that can be obtained must be carried 
up several flights of stairs, cleanliness is indeed a 
virtue. 

Then there is the fallacious fear on the part of 
some that there will be a lack of shelter and that 
unless some philanthropist provides special hous- 
ing accommodations at once for the lowest classes 

18 



SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 

in the community, they will have nowhere to 
live. This has never been a practical question in 
any American city. There are, of course, times 
when there may be in some quarters of each city 
a shortage of housing accommodations, within 
certain rentals, but there is never such lack of 
accommodations that people are without shelter 
because of inability to fmd places in which to live; 
nor will there ever be such a situation. 

Where pressure for living accommodations be- 
comes so great that the demand overwhelmingly 
exceeds the supply, there is always a migration of 
workers and their families from one section to an- 
other. Before such a situation develops, however, 
the self-interest of the average builder can be 
trusted to deal with it. Such men keep in very 
close touch with the development of each section 
of the city and are quick to seize their opportunity 
to make a profitable investment. This fear that 
there will be a lack of shelter is frequently ex- 
pressed in connection with large public improve- 
ments. Where it is proposed to tear down 
unsanitary tenements, or to create a new small 
park in some crowded quarter, the cry soon goes 
up that you are depriving the people of their homes 
and that they will have nowhere to live. There 
has never been a case in this country where the 
population thus displaced has suffered. They 
quickly adapt themselves to the new conditions. 
In New York, in connection with one public 
improvement, 10,000 persons were displaced at 

19 



HOUSING REFORM 

practically one time and they found homes without 
difficulty. 

Another erroneous belief is that good houses do 
not pay. It is true that many so-called model 
tenement enterprises have not paid. This has 
not been because the houses were improved 
buildings, but because they had been either un- 
wisely planned, extravagantly built or badly 
managed. 

A picturesque view frequently encountered is 
that dilapidation is a serious evil. As a rule, it 
means at most discomfort. It seldom means 
illness or disease. The popular conception (cer- 
tainly the newspaper one) of bad housing condi- 
tions is some small old building in dilapidated 
condition. This is only a minor evil compared 
with the really serious conditions which frequently 
exist in the tall, modern, expensive looking tene- 
ments of our larger cities, fair on the outside but 
whited sepulchres, containing within dark rooms 
and narrow airshafts, poisonous plumbing and 
countless other evils. A leaky roof is only an 
intermittent discomfort, but unventilated rooms 
and bad plumbing are subtle and sure destroyers 
of health. Housing reform is not to be sought 
upon a basis of aesthetic advance. It must rest 
on a much firmer foundation, that of public health 
and the stability and social welfare of the com- 
munity. 

That unsanitary houses should be destroyed 
is another mistaken belief. This is the rock on 

20 



SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 

which the bark of housing reform often founders. 
Frequently the first effort made is to secure the 
enactment of laws which will permit the destruc- 
tion of unsanitary buildings. A less drastic and 
equally effective method is simply to prohibit 
the occupancy of such houses. If there are houses 
which are manifestly unfit for human habitation, 
people should not be permitted to dwell in them. 
Nothing is to be gained by their destruction. 
The empty building itself is not dangerous. Why, 
therefore, should the state destroy property of 
this kind? The attempt to do so creates an 
opposition, on the part of property owners, which 
often sets back many years the whole movement 
for housing reform. 

Probably one of the most interesting fallacies 
of all those entertained is the one that rear tene- 
ments are in themselves bad. I suppose that 
there is hardly an individual who would not at 
once express the opinion that the worst type of 
tenement house is the rear tenement. Such, 
however, is emphatically not the case. There are 
bad rear tenements, but there are many good 
ones — many indeed which are far better to live in 
than many front houses. There is nothing in the 
fact that the building is located in the rear away 
from the street which makes the house bad in 
itself. The determination of whether it is good 
or bad rests upon other considerations — the same 
considerations indeed which apply to a front 
house; namely, the amount of open space sur- 



HOUSING REFORM 

rounding it, the provision for adequate light and 
ventilation, reasonable fire protection and proper 
maintenance and care of the premises. There is 
a belief quite prevalent that the fact that the rear 
building is hidden away from the street and access 
to it must be had through the front building, 
leads to immorality and deeds of darkness. This, 
however, is only a belief. There is nothing in the 
experience of any city to substantiate such a view. 
I suppose the reason why the rear tenement has 
such a bad name is because of the failure of the 
public to carefully analyze the causes of bad 
conditions. It is true that the death rate in 
many of the rear tenements has often been much 
higher than it has been in many of the front 
houses. To argue from this, post hoc ergo propter 
hoc, that the high death rate in such buildings is 
due to the fact that they are rear houses is singu- 
larly naive. A careful study of the facts shows 
that the high death rate in many of these buildings 
is due to a variety of causes. Because they have 
no view of the street, they naturally command a 
lower rental, just as the rear apartments of a 
front building command lower rentals than the 
street apartments. Moreover, they are generally 
old buildings and are invariably provided with 
privies and privy sinks instead of the modern 
plumbing and sanitary conveniences found in 
front buildings; they are seldom provided with 
water supply inside the buildings. For these 
reasons rents are lower and such buildings are 

22 



SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 

usually occupied by the poorest elements of the 
community. That the death rate should be 
higher among these classes, handicapped by pov- 
erty, ill-nourished, and having a constant struggle 
to make both ends meet, is not surprising. It is 
manifestly misleading to charge these potent influ- 
ences to the rear tenem.ent as such. 

On the other hand, there are rear houses that 
are distinctly bad — '* back- to-back'' tenements, 
so-called; buildings which practically abut each 
other in the rear, sometimes with but two or 
three inches between them, shutting out light 
and ventilation and creating various kinds of 
unsanitary conditions. Such dwellings should not 
be tolerated. Bad rear tenements should not be 
allowed to be occupied any more than bad front 
tenements. But there should be no distinction 
made because of the fact that one is on the street 
and the other in the yard. 

Finally comes the often-encountered view that 
the main criterion of the presence or absence of 
bad conditions is to be found in the death rate. 
To argue from a low death rate that housing 
conditions are satisfactory is misleading. It is 
equally misleading to argue that a high death 
rate is due primarily to bad housing conditions. 
So many elements enter into the death rate that 
it is unsafe to generalize from it. In the first 
place, the death rate is a ratio between two classes 
of facts: the population and the number of deaths 
in a given year. The latter fact is generally 

23 



HOUSING REFORM 

accurately known; the former fact is almost 
never accurately known except just at the time 
when a census has been taken. The population, 
a very important element in figuring the death 
rate, is generally therefore an estimate. It is a 
frequent trick of a municipal administration when 
it desires to make a good showing in regard to the 
death rate, to over-estimate the city's growth of 
population. This is pretty safe, as no one really 
knows what the city's population is, and figures 
that are put out can not be successfully disputed. 
Besides, there is an inherent tendency in most peo- 
ple to feel a sense of complacent pride in the growth 
of their own community, and few citizens are in- 
clined to dispute the accuracy of figures which show 
what seems to most minds desirable advancement. 
Other elements which enter into death rates are 
the nature of occupation, race, diet, industrial con- 
ditions, and an infinite variety of influences. 
Furthermore, it is not necessary to base one's 
judgment with regard to the presence or absence 
of adverse housing conditions upon questions of 
death rate. V/hy, therefore, pay attention to it? 
If there are bad housing conditions it is a matter 
easily susceptible of proof. Unsanitary privies, 
dark rooms, lack of drainage, cellar dwellings, 
overcrowding and all the other more frequent 
manifestations of bad housing, if they exist, can 
be shown. So long as they are there the necessity 
for remedying them exists. The appeal to the 
death rate becomes of no moment. 

24 



Ill 

CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 



MI 
CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 

CERTAIN social problems are inextricably 
interwoven with the housing problem. Of 
these, congestion and overcrowding are 
two of the more important. The terms are not 
synonymous, nor are they very well understood. 
We talk about crowding and overcrowding, and 
congestion of population. What is meant? Where 
does crowding end and overcrowding begin? 
When may a district be said to be congested? 
How many people should occupy an acre of land? 
Is there any arbitrary standard that can be 
determined upon? Are we all sure that it is 
injurious to a community to have, for example, 
500 people to the acre? And if 500 may be 
permitted, where is the line to be drawn? Is 
750 too many, or indeed 1000? Who is to deter- 
mine? 

Frankly, I do not believe that there is any arbi- 
trary or fixed standard that can be adopted. In 
some parts of China where the number of people 
to the acre is very much less than it is in many 
parts of modern New York, conditions of living 
are infinitely worse from the point of view of 

27 



HOUSING REFORM 

overcrowding and congestion. It makes a very 
great difference whether looo people to the acre 
are housed in buildings one and two stories high 
or whether they are housed in buildings five and 
six stories high. There may easily be 500 and 
even 1000 people to the acre living in high build- 
ings ten or twenty stories high and yet there be no 
conditions of overcrowding whatever. In some 
high-class hotels in our larger cities it will be 
found that there are over 1200 persons to the 
acre, yet no sensible person dreams of calling such 
conditions, conditions of overcrowding or con- 
gestion. 

Congestion and overcrowding are not to be 
determined by the number of people living on a 
given area of land. The vital question is the 
distribution of such population, the actual close 
proximity in which people live. 

There are two kinds of overcrowding. These 
should be carefully distinguished. The first is 
the overcrowding of limited areas of land with an 
undue population, resulting in congestion. This 
is the form of overcrowding with which we are 
more familiar in American cities, especially in 
the larger ones, but is not the form that is gener- 
ally meant in the discussion of this question. 
Overcrowding, as it is known in English and 
European cities, concerns itself almost entirely 
with the occupation by an undue number of 
persons of a limited space in rooms or apartments. 
This is the great problem in London and, to a 

28 



CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 

somewhat lesser extent, in some of the larger 
English and Scotch cities. 

Room overcrowding is a very different thing 
from land overcrowding; but here, too, there are 
difficulties in the way of establishing arbitrary 
standards. What constitutes room overcrowding? 
The only standard that has been adopted hereto- 
fore in this country has been the standard of a 
minimum amount of cubic air space. In most 
cities this standard has been 400 cubic feet of air 
for each adult, and 200 cubic feet of air for each 
child under twelve years of age occupying a room. 
Such a standard is valueless. To illustrate: A 
bedroom seven feet wide and ten feet long and nine 
feet high contains 630 cubic feet of air. Let us as- 
sume it is well lighted and ventilated, with a large 
window opening directly on a broad street, and 
that the room communicates with other rooms 
with plentiful windows and through ventilation. 
No better bedroom could be devised from the point 
of view of health and sanitation, and yet a man 
and his wife, or two boys fourteen years of age, 
could not under such a requirement of law legally 
sleep in this room, because there is not 400 cubic 
feet of air for each. 

If 400 cubic feet is not the proper minimum, 
what is the proper minimum? Shall it be 600 or 
800 or 200? Study of the problems involved 
leads to the conclusion that not only the question 
of cubic air space must be considered, but far 
more important must be the kind of air supplied 

29 



HOUSING REFORM 

to the room and the jrequency of its renewal. It 
would be far better to permit a family to sleep in 
a room containing but 400 cubic feet of air of 
excellent quality and frequently renewed, than 
to permit them to sleep in a room containing four 
times the amount where the renewal was not so 
frequent nor the source of original supply so 
satisfactory. It makes a very great difference 
whether the air comes from a broad street or 
from a narrow alley, from a large backyard or 
from a narrow air-shaft. These considerations 
are generally lost sight of in the discussion of this 
problem. This question like the question of land 
overcrowding can not be determined by any arbi- 
trary standard. 

But while our theoretical standards may vary, 
and while workable legal limits are yet to be 
determined, there are undebatable relief measures 
which may be undertaken. The problem of 
congestion is largely one of distribution, both 
within and without the city. Every effort should 
be made to encourage people to leave the crowded 
quarters of the large cities and return to country 
or suburban life. This is easy to say but difficult 
to accomplish. The causes which have led to the 
concentration in the cities of this large population 
militate against its distribution. 

As a rule, people live in cities because they like 
city life; because they find there social and 
industrial opportunities which are not to be found 
in country districts. Those persons in cities, 

30 



CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 

however, who have a liking and aptitude for rural 
life should be encouraged to move to the country. 
To be effective this should be done in an organized 
way and with a definite realization of what is 
necessary. The main thing is to insure to them 
equal or better opportunities for earning their 
livelihood. Educational and social advantages 
must be provided as well, if a movement of this 
kind is to succeed. 

When this has been done, however, and those 
in the cities who can be induced to seek their 
fortunes in the country have done so, there will 
still remain a vast number of people who must be 
housed in cities. The great majority of the work- 
ing people will always live there and every effort 
should be made to see that they are housed under 
proper conditions. 

Not only should efforts be made to remove 
people from the city to the country, but attempts 
should be made, so far as may be practicable, to 
induce persons living in crowded districts to move 
to the outlying sections of large cities. Through 
an organized campaign there should be brought 
home to them the advantages thus to be found: 
the cheaper rents attainable, the better light and 
air, the better school advantages, the opportunity 
for healthful play for their children, the possibility 
of quiet and of individual life. 

To thousands, however, this appeal can not be 
made. Neither country nor suburban life is at- 
tractive to them. Their enjoyment is found in the 

31 



HOUSING REFORM 

Stir of city life, the crowd, the constant social ac- 
tivity. The easier opportunities for employment, 
the theatres, the lighted streets, the saloons, the 
lodge meetings, the dancing academies, churches, 
settlements, all prove potent attractions, and only 
a comparative few of the ordinary tenement popu- 
lation have any desire to leave these things for the 
advantages of life in the less densely settled dis- 
tricts. 

In addition to attempts to get people out of the 
city and to distribute them within the city, if 
congestion of population is to be overcome and 
overcrowding prevented, efforts addressed to the 
problems of land overcrowding and room over- 
crowding, separately, must be made. There must 
be devised some practicable plan of restriction of 
population within the city itself and some adequate 
method of preventing room overcrowding. The 
only practicable way to remedy land overcrowding, 
so far as the future is concerned, is to limit the 
height of dwellings and also the area of land that 
may be built upon, thus reducing the number of 
people who can occupy it. 

This, however, will not remedy existing condi- 
tions. The only way that these can be improved is 
by tearing down large areas and rebuilding, follow- 
ing the precedents established in European cities. 
Thus far no such scheme has been carried out in 
any American city. The chief obstacle to it is its 
excessive cost. When we consider that an ordi- 
nary block in the tenement districts on the Lower 

32 



CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 

East Side of New York is worth from f 1,000,000 
to 11,500,000, it is obvious that the city can not 
embark upon improvement schemes of this nature 
to a very great extent without imposing insupport- 
able burdens upon the taxpayers. 

Room overcrowding is bound up with another 
social problem; namely, the lodger evil. This 
prevails chiefly among the foreign elements of the 
population, more especially among the Italians 
and Poles, and in some cities, the Hungarians and 
other Slavic races. It also prevails among the 
Jews in the larger cities. It is fraught with great 
danger to the social fabric of the country. It 
means the undermining of family life; often the 
breaking down of domestic standards. It fre- 
quently leads to the breaking up of homes and 
families, to the downfall and subsequent degraded 
career of young women, to grave immoralities — 
in a word, to the profanation of the home. 

Its economic consequences are also serious. To 
it may be charged, in large degree, the high rentals 
which prevail in many cities. Probably no more 
curious instance occurs of the peculiar intertwin- 
ing of cause and effect. Often, the inadequate 
earnings of the poor immigrant make it necessary 
to supplement the family income by taking in 
boarders or lodgers. In many cases, such neces- 
sity does not exist, but the parsimonious habits 
of the people lead them to adopt this way of 
adding dollar to dollar. It is hard to tell to what 
extent the practice is due to necessity and to 
3 33 



HOUSING REFORM 

what extent to avarice. The result is the same in 
both cases. The effect soon is to raise rents. 
Landlords are quick to realize that their tenants 
have augmented the family earnings by sub- 
letting a portion of their rooms. The rooms at 
once become more valuable because a larger rev- 
enue can thus be secured and rents are promptly 
raised. Thus, in a short time, the tenant is no 
better off than before; in fact, worse, because the 
practice has spread and standards of living have 
been readjusted. The total family income, though 
now greater, is still relatively where it was before, 
because of the increased cost of living. 

No adequate method has as yet been devised of 
effectively preventing room overcrowding. The 
attempts made thus far have all been in the direc- 
tion of limiting by law the number of people occu- 
pying a room with reference to the amount of 
cubic air space in it. Unfortunately, such a 
provision is almost impossible of enforcement. 
In order to enforce it, inspections must be made 
at night. It is only then that the lodgers and 
boarders, the chief causes of overcrowding, are to 
be found. To question the tenement dwellers in 
the daytime with regard to their practice of taking 
in boarders or lodgers is to ask them to convict 
themselves, and such investigations are obviously 
of little value. To adequately carry on night 
inspections of the homes of the poor would re- 
quire an army of inspectors. It would involve, 
moreover, an invasion of the privacy of the home, 

34 



CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 

which is repugnant to American institutions. 
The routing out of workingmen 's families after 
midnight in order to determine whether they 
have boarders or lodgers living with them would 
be intolerable. 

To cope with the problem of overcrowding and 
the lodger evil effectively the law should place 
upon the landlord the responsibility for an undue 
number of people in his house, as it has already 
placed upon him in the case of women of ill- 
repute responsibility for their character. In 
certain classes of tenements the taking in of 
lodgers or boarders, except with the written 
consent of the landlord, must be prohibited and 
the landlord must be held responsible for any 
departure from this rule. This principle has not 
as yet been recognized by any American city, 
but it is one that must be established if this evil 
is to be overcome. 



35 



IV 

THE HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD 

ONE 



IV 

THE HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD 

ONE 

THE housing problem is a three-fold one 
and concerns the future, the present and 
the past. I put the future first. 

Effort at housing reform should be directed 
first toward preventing the erection of buildings 
which are not suitable for people to live in. It 
is better to shut the stable door before the horse 
is stolen. The first duty is to safeguard the future, 
to prevent the growth of new slums, to prevent 
the creation of types of buildings which will later 
become a menace to the community. 

The housing problem also concerns the present. 
Provision must be made for the proper main- 
tenance of all houses. The state must see to it 
that the dwellings of the poor — of those members 
of the community least able to protect themselves 
— are maintained in a sanitary condition, are 
kept in repair, are provided with the necessities 
of decent living. 

Housing reform also concerns the past. It 
must remedy the mistakes of earlier years; it 
must make up for the neglect and carelessness of 

39 



HOUSING REFORM 

preceding generations, and must bring about such 
changes in the older buildings as are necessary 
to make them fit for human habitation and pre- 
vent their being an influence for disease and death. 

The housing problem is in another sense a three- 
fold one and must be considered from three dif- 
ferent points of view: the sanitary, the structural, 
the social. From the point of view of sanitation, 
effort at housing reform should concern itself 
with provision for adequate light and sufficient 
ventilation in all buildings, for a sufficient water 
supply within the houses, preferably in each 
apartment, and for proper sanitary conveniences. 
Provision must be made for the collection of 
garbage, and other waste material with sufficient 
frequency, for the cleanliness of those parts of the 
building used in common by several families, with 
fixed responsibility for their proper maintenance; 
and where many families live in one house, for 
the employment of competent housekeepers or 
janitors to look after the building. In the older 
houses privy vaults and sinks must be abolished 
and more modern conveniences substituted; anti- 
quated earthenware drains must be done away 
with. 

From the structural point of view, provision 
should be made for reasonable protection in case 
of fire. Where many people dwell in one building, 
fire-escapes that will permit quick and ready 
egress must be furnished. The determination of 
what is necessary must depend upon the number 

40 



HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 

of people living in the building, the nature of its 
construction and the effectiveness of the local 
fire-department service. 

In future buildings methods of construction 
should be required that will minimize the danger 
from fire. Here, as elsewhere, one should avoid 
arbitrary standards. There is a popular concep-j 
tion that fire-proof buildings are essential. They! 
are not. To decree that every tenement house! 
erected in the future shall be of fire-proof con- 
struction may be a great mistake. The result^ 
may be, as it has been in some places, the com- 
plete cessation of the building of new houses for 
the accommodation of the poorer members of the 
community, resulting in a dearth of living accom- 
modations, forcing up rents and compelling people 
to live in the older and more dilapidated buildings; 
thus defeating the very purposes of those who had 
brought about such enactment. Requirements of 
such nature must be reasonable; they must address 
themselves to the facts. 

The decision must be based upon a study of the 
frequency of fires in a given locality, the number 
of lives thus lost annually, the cost of building 
construction, land values, rents and similar ques- 
tions. Even in the great city of New York, in 
its most congested districts, where land values are 
at their highest, where the population of each 
block frequently ranges from 2500 to 3000 people 
and where the houses are built up solidly in rows 
of six-story tenements with twenty families in 

41 



HOUSING REFORM 

each, the most ardent advocates of housing reform 
have not deemed it wise to enact that all future 
tenement houses even in those sections shall be of 
fire-proof construction. Instead, a type of build- 
ing has been permitted to be erected in which 
the special danger points have special safeguards 
thrown around them. 

From the social point of view, effort at housing 
reform must concern itself with a vast host of 
questions: the questions of overcrowding, con- 
gestion of population, the lodger evil, the adapta- 
tion of diverse foreign peoples to American con- 
ditions, the difficulties of adjustment to the new 
environment with the impediment of a strange 
language, the lack of educational opportunities, 
the sweating system — that evil by which homes are 
turned into workshops and outside workers are 
brought m to intrude upon the family life — the 
lack of opportunities for healthful recreation and 
play, and the difficulty of ordinary social inter- 
course in the cramped surroundings. These are 
but some of the more important questions which 
must be carefully studied. Each is a problem in 
itself, but each is closely interwoven with the 
housing problem. The housing problem should 
not be considered without reference to them, nor 
can these problems be adequately treated without 
reference to the home environment. 

The housing problem is in another sense, still, 
a three-fold one. It must be considered from the 
point of view of the landlord, the tenant and the 

42 



HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 

community. There is grave danger that housing 
reformers in considering the welfare of the tenant 
may fail to consider the point of view of the land- 
lord. It must be clearly recognized that the 
landlord has a right to a legitimate profit on his 
investment. On the other hand he must not be 
permitted to wring an undue profit from it at the 
expense of his tenants. There are all kinds of 
landlords and all kinds of tenants. Many owners 
promptly make repairs, provide every reasonable 
convenience for the occupants and take pride in 
keeping their property in first-class condition. 

But there are also landlords who neglect their 
houses, who make no repairs except under com- 
pulsion, who care little whether their tenants 
suffer inconveniences and sanitary evils, and 
whose chief interest is in obtaining from their 
properties the largest possible return upon their 
investment. Similarly with regard to the tenants : 
there are good tenants and bad tenants. The 
conception of some landlords that most tenants 
are destructive, disorderly, anxious to get all they 
can out of the landlord, willing to leave with 
many months' rent unpaid, is applicable only to 
a limited number. 

Finally, regard must be had for the welfare of 
the community. The injury caused to the whole 
social fabric, the effect of bad housing conditions 
in producing vice, crime, poverty, disease, sick- 
ness, death, must be weighed and considered. 
The community has an interest in such questions 

43 



HOUSING REFORM 

quite equal to that of the landlord and the tenant. 
All these various interests must be fairly consid- 
ered. No one must unduly preponderate. 

The housing problem is in another sense a three- 
fold one, and must be considered with regard to 
the existing conditions, the laws, and their 
administration. Beyond all other things effort 
at housing reform must proceed upon carefully 
ascertained exact knowledge of the conditions 
which require remedy. The laws which are put 
into effect to remedy those conditions must not 
be arbitrary enactments based upon the theoretical 
views of social enthusiasts, but must be the result 
of carefully worked-out, practical consideration of 
the problems involved, and adapted to the peculiar 
local conditions it is sought to remedy. 

There is a tendency in many communities — and 
a very unfortunate one — to copy in a rather unim- 
aginative way some law enacted in another city, 
acting apparently upon the hypothesis that what is 
good for one place is good for another. Housing 
legislation upon such a basis will not succeed, and 
should not succeed. While it is true that each 
city should take advantage to the fullest extent 
of the experience of other cities, studying the 
laws that have been there enacted and embodying 
in their own statutes their best features, the fact 
remains that the wisest law is one which is exactly 
fitted to meet the peculiar local conditions. 

It is useless to put forth time and effort in 
securing the enactment of legislation unless the 

44 



HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 

means are provided for its prompt and thorough 
enforcement. It is a common experience to fmd 
communities enacting elaborate laws for the reg- 
ulation of social evils of various kinds but fail- 
ing to provide machinery for their enforcement. 
This may satisfy a desire for intellectual activity 
on the part of groups of enthusiasts, but can not 
go far toward remedying adverse social conditions. 
Nearly every state is thus encumbered with nu- 
merous laws that are never or seldom enforced. 

Not only must the administrative machinery 
be provided for by law but adequate financial 
provision for its support must be made by the 
local authorities. 

A lesson in this regard is to be learned from 
New York's experience. Eight years ago a com- 
prehensive scheme for the improvement of the 
older tenement houses in the more essential 
particulars was provided in the Tenement House 
Act of 1 90 1. Owners were required to remove 
unsanitary privy sinks, to cut windows into dark 
rooms, to lighten dark halls, to concrete cellars 
and to make other structural changes. They 
were given a year's time in which to do this. 
Adequate administrative machinery was provided 
through the creation of a separate city department 
known as the Tenement House Department, one 
of whose functions was to see that these changes 
were carried out. Only now, however, eight 
years later, has this department received from 
the local authorities a sufficient appropriation to 

45 



HOUSING REFORM 

enable it to do this work. The result is that the 
larger part of the work has remained undone 
during all of this time and thousands of the city's 
population have had to continue life under those 
adverse conditions which the legislation had de- 
creed eight years ago should cease. 



46 



HOW TO START A MOVEMENT FOR HOUS- 
ING REFORM 



HOW TO START A MOVEMENT FOR HOUS- 
ING REFORM 

THE failure to remedy bad housing conditions 
in many communities has been due not so 
much to lack of understanding of the con- 
ditions themselves, as to lack of knowledge of the 
best method of remedying them. The first step 
is the formation of a committee of public spirited 
citizens, conscious of the dangerous effects of bad 
environment and anxious to remove, so far as may 
be practicable, the adverse conditions under which 
many people are compelled to live. Such a com- 
mittee should be carefully selected and organ- 
ized. Its function is a two-fold one: first, to as- 
certain the facts and formulate the remedies; 
second, to educate the community with regard to 
the conditions discovered and the means at hand 
for their amelioration. It must therefore be a 
body sufficiently wise to prosecute its inquiry and 
urge its reforms in a practical and sane way, and 
also one that will com.mand public confidence. 

As the questions with which it is to deal are 
those of building construction, architectural plan- 
ning, fire protection, sanitation and modern social 
4 49 



HOUSING REFORM 

problems, the committee should preferably be 
composed of leading representatives of the pro- 
fessions actively dealing with such problems. 
Where it is possible, it should have among its 
members a practical architect, a builder of the 
better grade, a sanitary engineer or high grade 
plumber, the chief of the fire department, the 
superintendent of buildings or similar official, a 
leading physician, a leading lawyer, a prominent 
real estate man, a leading social worker — either 
the head of a settlement or of a local charitable 
society familiar with the conditions under which 
the poor live — and such other prominent citizens 
as would naturally be interested in a movement 
of this kind from the humanitarian point of view 
and whose standing in the community would add 
weight to the committee. 

But the essential element for success is an 
efficient and homogeneous committee that com- 
mands public confidence and can readily work 
together. No variety of professional experience 
should outweigh this essential element. 

In selecting the personnel, care should be taken 
to avoid the appointment of public officials who 
are merely politicians and neither interested in 
the inquiry nor actively familiar with the work 
of their own departments. It is important that 
the various representatives mentioned should not 
only be deemed representative by the members of 
their own professions, but also by the general 
public. Too much emphasis can not be placed 

50 



A MOVEMENT FOR HOUSING REFORM 

upon the desirability of having the committee 
so constituted that it will seem to the public a 
practical body. As a rule it is desirable that it 
should be composed entirely of men. 

The best committee, however constituted, will 
make little progress unless it secures a competent 
executive. The difficulty of securing such men 
has been one of the main reasons why the improve- 
ment of housing conditions has not made more 
rapid progress in many American cities. The 
right man must combine so many different 
qualities. He must understand practical building 
construction; he must understand plumbing and 
modern sanitation; the essential principles of 
light and ventilation; he must be familiar with 
the conditions under which the poor live; must 
be able to discriminate between necessities and 
conveniences; must have a sense of proportion, an 
appreciation of values — of the relation between 
what is possible and what is desirable; the ability 
to present facts in a way that will be convincing 
to the public; a knowledge of the purposes, 
methods and scope of social investigations, and 
an ability to handle the results obtained from 
such inquiries. He must also possess the faculty 
of working harmoniously with various groups of 
people. And above all he must master in advance 
the arguments of his opponents. 

Every movement for housing reform is a battle. 
Most of them are protracted wars extending over 
many years. The leader of the campaign must 

51 



HOUSING REFORM 

have many of the qualities of a good general. 
Strategy must not be unknown to him. 

Vitally important is the ability to get the point 
of view of the various interests involved in bad 
housing conditions. There must be breadth of 
view, fair-mindedness and tolerance of the rights 
of others, of the owners as well as of the tenants, 
if a successful outcome is to be had from such a 
movement. 

I have said that the functions of an improved 
housing committee are two-fold: to ascertain the 
facts, and to educate the community. It would 
seem a truism to state that the first duty is the 
ascertainment of the facts, yet probably no one 
thing is harder to impress upon persons taking up 
a movement for housing reform than this. It is 
true that the facts are known in a general way, but 
that is not what is meant. The facts must be 
known accurately, carefully and scientifically. 
There are no short cuts. 

There can be no successful legislation based 
upon impressions. Reforms not based upon care- 
fully ascertained facts will be found to have no 
permanent value. You will but enact a law one 
year to have it repealed the next. 

The breast-works which defend the law are 
made of the materials dug out in the investigation. 



52 



VI 

THE ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING 
INVESTIGATION 



VI 

THE ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING 
INVESTIGATION 

THE purpose of all housing investigations is 
primarily to find out exactly what the con- 
ditions are, so that appropriate action may 
be taken to bring about their amelioration. Such 
an inquiry, therefore, must be directed to practical 
ends. It must concern itself not only with present 
conditions, but with past causes and future ten- 
dencies. It is not to be treated as a sociological 
investigation. If it is so treated, it will have 
little permanent value in improving conditions. 
Nor is it to be prosecuted from the point of view 
primarily of increasing the knowledge of the 
community with regard to the conditions under 
which people live. That will indeed be one of its 
important by-products, but its main end should 
be the formulation of measures by which the ad- 
verse conditions discovered may be remedied. 

No part of a housing investigation is of more 
importance than the formulation of the schedules 
to be used in the inquiry, and no part is usually 
approached with so little knowledge of the facts 
to be disclosed. Often because of the interest 

55 



HOUSING REFORM 

aroused in the community and the pressure 
brought by members of the committee, there is 
the temptation to hurry into the field with in- 
vestigations, prematurely, before a comprehensive 
plan has been worked out. Such procedure is a 
costly waste of effort and money. The results 
obtained are invariably unsatisfactory, and often 
many phases of the inquiry have to be done over. 
A month or more may very well be taken in the 
preparation of housing schedules, especially where 
the person making the inquiry comes to the task 
without special knowledge of such investigations. 
It will repay the investigator, before adopting his 
final schedules, to put them to actual test in the 
field for some days, as it will generally be found 
that many changes are necessary in order to make 
the schedules serve their full purpose. 

The preparation of such schedules often taxes 
all the resources of an investigator. Certain im- 
portant points should be borne in mind. Expe- 
rience shows that schedules of this nature should 
be in card form, thus permitting the filing of 
the records with regard to individual buildings 
in a systematic and readily accessible way. The 
best size card to use is one five inches wide by 
eight inches long. This is a standard size and can 
be obtained in stock. Cards any smaller than 
this will be found insufficient to contain the various 
facts that it is necessary to ascertain. Difi'erent 
colors should be used for different purposes. 

In general, the various points expected to be 
56 



ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING INVESTIGATION 

covered should be anticipated and printed upon 
the card, leaving to the investigator merely the 
task of checking the various classes of facts dis- 
covered in the inquiry. This is important for 
two reasons: first, in order to save the time of the 
investigator; second, so as to present the same 
classes of facts in the same way with regard to 
each building, family or block that may be the 
subject of the inquiry. If, instead of this, each 
investigator is allowed to write in what his judg- 
ment suggests with regard to each class of facts, 
it will be found, when it is sought to tabulate the 
results of the inquiry, that they are not susceptible 
of tabulation, and that, instead of having a clear, 
concise, definite report of conditions found, there 
will be nothing more than a mere jumble of im- 
pressions, from which it will be difficult to give the 
public a clear conception of the actual conditions. 
The records should be made in ink. Investi- 
gators should not be permitted to use note books 
and to copy the facts from their note books on 
the cards at home or in the oifice. Such a method 
is not only an unnecessary duplication of work 
but fatal to accuracy. The cards are for actual 
field use and should be so designed as to facilitate 
such use. Quite frequently persons making hous- 
ing schedules arrange the facts that are to be 
noted on the cards in such order as they happen 
to occur to them. The result is that often an 
investigator, if he follows his card schedules (as 
he must) is called upon to record certain facts 

57 



HOUSING REFORM 

with regard to the cellar of a house, is then called 
upon to record facts with regard to the roof, then 
suddenly plunged to the cellar again, then to 
some of the apartments, perhaps on the third floor, 
then to the out-premises, and so jumped from one 
portion of the building to another, involving an 
unnecessary waste of time and effort. 

The properly prepared schedule* arranges the 
classes of facts to be noted, in the same order on 
the card as will be actually followed by the inves- 
tigator in his progress through the building, begin- 
ning either at the cellar and ascending through the 
building to the roof, or beginning at the roof and 
descending to the cellar and out-premises. 

Where there are many apartments or families 
in a building and it is desired to learn many facts 
with regard to each apartment or family, it will 
be found essential to prepare separate schedules 
for each apartment or family, separating the facts 
thus ascertained from the general points of in- 
formation with regard to the building itself. 

In preparing card schedules it is important that 
the method of printing should embody, so far as 
practicable, a scheme of classification of the more 
important classes of facts to be ascertained. 
Thus, one style and size of type should be used to 
indicate certain classes of facts, like cleanliness 
and repair; and a subordinate size and style of 
type to indicate sub-topics under each one of these 
classes. 

*See sample schedules, pages 199-203. 

58 



ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING INVESTIGATION 

How to do away with the conflicting judgment 
of different individuals is one of the problems 
that is most perplexing. How is one to tell the 
number of dark rooms, for example, where there 
are such conflicting opinions in the minds of the 
investigators as to what a dark room is? What 
constitutes a dark room, and a very dark room? 
Even more confusing are reports rendered with 
regard to conditions of cleanliness and uncleanli- 
ness. What is a dirty hall? What one person 
calls a dirty hall another may call a clean one. 
Similarly with regard to repair: To be told that a 
house is in good repair or in poor repair means 
little. What seems poor repair to one man seems 
very bad repair to another. 

As a means of counteracting this difficulty so far 
as may be practicable, a plan has been devised by 
which it is sought to have the investigator report 
the conditions found not only by an adjective but 
also to indicate on a percentage basis his opinion as 
to the state of affairs disclosed : Thus, in reporting 
as to cleanliness it is suggested that the following 
scheme be adopted: That the investigators be 
allowed to answer only in the following terms: 
"Very Clean,'' "Clean," "Dirty," "Somewhat 
Dirty," "Filthy," and in addition be required to 
indicate these facts on a percentage basis, thus — 
"Very Clean" shall be deemed loo; "Clean," 80; 
"Somewhat Dirty," 60; "Dirty," 40; "Filthy," 
"o." Similarly with regard to repair: The 
investigator should be permitted to answer in 

59 



HOUSING REFORM 

only three terms as to the condition of repair; viz., 
"Good," " Fair, " " Bad,'' and these should be nu- 
merically expressed by loo, 50, o. The obser- 
vance of these principles will be found to be of 
great help. 

Another point upon which emphasis should be 
placed is the importance of providing in the be- 
ginning of such inquiries for sufficient time and 
for the expenditure of sufficient funds for the 
tabulation of the reports after the field work is 
completed. Often too little provision is made 
for this phase of the work. It will be found that 
it takes quite as much time as does the actual 
ascertainment of the facts in the field. 

As the investigation proceeds, arrangements 
should be made for securing photographs of typ- 
ical conditions for use in illustrating the report, 
as they will greatly enhance its value and effec- 
tiveness. 

No portion of a housing investigation presents 
more difficulties than the formulation of the re- 
port. The most important and vital facts may 
have been discovered and yet, unless they are 
properly presented, little value is likely to flow 
from the investigation. The facts discovered 
must be presented to the community in such a 
way as to hold people's attention; to impress 
upon them in a manner never to be forgotten the 
conditions under which many are living and the 
menace of these conditions to the community as 
a whole. 

60 



VII 

MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR 
LIMITATIONS 



VII 

MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR 
LIMITATIONS 

IN the popular mind the solution of the hous- 
ing problem lies in the building of "model 
tenements/' Probably the first suggestion 
that is made when a group of people take up the 
housing problem for the first time is to build a 
model tenement. It is strange that intelligent 
people should believe that the building of one 
house of this kind in any city can have any very 
appreciable effect in solving the housing problem. 
I doubt whether such belief is ever consciously 
held. What happens is that people see bad 
housing conditions and say to themselves: "The 
poor should have decent houses to live in. They 
have built model tenements in other places. In 
some cities they have been very successful. Sup- 
pose we build one.'' Underlying this is the desire 
to get quick results, to see quickly realized the 
tangible product of one's efforts. 

Such a point of view indicates lack of imagina- 
tion, a failure to appreciate the extent and influ- 
ence of the bad conditions that exist and the 
limitations of the influence of one model tenement. 

63 



HOUSING REFORM 

Perhaps back of all, in the minds of those who 
really do think this far, is the belief that it is 
necessary to demonstrate: first, that the poor 
really want improved housing conditions; second, 
that model tenements will pay in that particular 
city and, third, that when they have demonstrated 
these two things the influence of their effort will 
be so great that it will lead other persons to build 
similar houses and thus gradually provide more 
accommodations of this nature for the working 
people. 

It would hardly seem necessary to comment on 
the state of the philanthropic education of a 
community that needs to have demonstrated to 
it in so expensive a way the fact that the poor 
desire improved and decent dwellings. It is a 
singularly provincial view which thinks it neces- 
sary to show that model tenements will pay in 
a particular locality, in view of their success for 
over fifty years in many of the large cities of the 
world. 

Finally, the belief that the ordinary com- 
mercial builder will be led to build improved 
tenements because of the object lesson afforded 
by the particular model tenement in question, is 
chimerical. The commercial builder is not in- 
fluenced by such considerations. His sole inter- 
est in building houses is to make money. He is 
going to build those houses that will net him the 
largest return, unless he is prevented by legis- 
lation. Nor will he voluntarily give up any 

64 



MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 

share of his profits in order that the future tenants 
of the building may have more conveniences. 
This is not a theoretical view. There is no city in 
America where model tenements have been built 
in which they have materially influenced the 
ordinary commercial builder. 

That persons really seeking to improve housing 
conditions should be willing to limit their efforts 
to the construction and management of a model 
tenement and be satisfied with the narrow results 
that flow from such an effort is disappointing. 
They do not seem to ask themselves: " How many 
people will this effort of ours reach? While we 
are building this one model tenement, which may 
at the best house 50 families or 250 people, how 
many unsanitary tenements will be constructed 
by speculative builders and how many thousands 
of people will be compelled to live in them?" 

Nor do they ask, "How many families are still 
being compelled to live in the old, dilapidated, un- 
sanitary houses in which they now live?" There 
seems to be no appreciation of the relation of their 
efforts to the community as a whole; no concep- 
tion on their part of the number of people for 
whom proper housing accommodations must be 
provided and their total inability to meet these 
needs through the building of one or even several 
model tenements. The question of the distribu- 
tion of such houses is also ordinarily lost sight 
of. People fail to realize that the building of one 
model tenement in the east end of the town is of 
5 65 



HOUSING REFORM 

very little advantage in improving the housing 
conditions of the people in the west end or in the 
south end or in some other quarter. 

The building of model tenements is in no com- 
munity a solution of the housing problem. If 
there are large numbers of people living in tene- 
ments insuificiently ventilated, in rooms partly 
underground, the building of a model tenement, 
even in that neighborhood, will remedy these 
conditions only for the few who live in it, and as 
long as conditions remain unchanged, people will 
continue to suffer under them. The situation of 
the thousands of people who must still live in 
houses that are dilapidated and out of repair, 
is in no way improved by the building of a model 
tenement in their city. If many families must 
still live in rooms the majority of which are dark, 
the building of a model tenement does not help 
them. If thousands of people are compelled to 
live without adequate water supply and ' with 
unsanitary plumbing, the building of a model 
tenement in no way improves their condition. 

The only way to improve the bad housing condi- 
tions that exist — defective plumbing, dark rooms, 
unsanitary premises and all the other evils — is to 
improve those conditions; namely, to prohibit 
cellar dwellings and to compel the owners by legal 
enactment to let light into the rooms, to clean up 
the premises and keep them clean, to provide 
water supply, &c. 

Moreover, good intentions do not make a model 
66 



MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 

tenement. To build a successful one requires a 
knowledge of the conditions under which the poor 
live; familiarity with the best and wisest methods 
of planning; an appreciation of the peculiar local 
conditions which exist in each neighborhood and 
the selection of the appropriate locality for the 
building. Even when all these requirements are 
observed, the whole enterprise may be wrecked 
because of the inability of the persons interested 
in it to properly manage it. The management of 
a tenement house is not an easy task, especially 
where the building contains a considerable num- 
ber of people of foreign nationalities. Too often 
the persons interested in such enterprises are un- 
familiar with the actual conditions under which 
the poorer people live, and are apt either to be 
extravagant in the construction of the building, 
to go to unnecessary expense, to waste space in 
unwise planning, or to so manage the house after 
it is erected that it becomes a failure. 

The history of the first model tenement in New 
York IS strikingly interesting. It was built in 
1855 by a group of public-spirited citizens who 
desired to improve living conditions. It was 
known as the *' Workmen's Home." One of *:he 
most interesting things connected with it was the 
statement made in the prospectus, that "Every 
room is well ventilated, having air flues from each 
to the roof.'' When it is known that there were 
on each floor twenty-eight entirely dark bedrooms, 
with only such ventilation as might be obtained 

67 



HOUSING REFORM 

from the public hallways or from a flue about the 
thickness of one brick in one of the walls, this 
statement seems rather astonishing to our present- 
day notions of what constitutes adequate light and 
ventilation. A few years after the building was 
erected it degenerated into one of the worst houses 
in the city and became the resort of thieves, 
prostitutes and the criminal classes generally. 

Another house built somewhat more recently 
has never been able to pay more than three per 
cent on the investment, sometimes not that, 
because an undue amount of land was left vacant 
and the building was unwisely planned. A third 
experiment of this nature recently terminated after 
considerable financial loss. After a life of seven- 
teen years, the property was abandoned by its 
philanthropic owners and sold to some real estate 
speculators, who shortly after altered the building, 
with the announcement that they found it neces- 
sary to do so to make it a paying proposition and 
to bring it up to the standards demanded by the 
tenants. 

The failure of these enterprises does not indicate 
that model tenements can not be built that will 
succeed, but does point to the fact that there are 
difficulties to be encountered which the average 
philanthropic person without experience does not 
think of when it is proposed to start an enterprise 
of this kind. 

The various model tenement enterprises in this 
country have manifested themselves in two forms. 

68 



MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 

First, the building of improved houses with the 
expressed intention of furnishing comfortable and 
pleasant living accommodations to the poorer 
members of the community at rents lower than the 
prevailing rentals. Such enterprises must be re- 
garded strictly as charity. They are very undesir- 
able and exert a pauperizing influence as do other 
forms of outdoor relief. They also invariably in- 
jure the cause of housing reform. 

The other form of effort, frequently designated 
by the title " Philanthropy and Five Per cent," is 
found in the work of those persons who, recognizing 
the unfortunate effect of such charity, build model 
tenements with the determination that their work 
shall be conducted as a business enterprise; that 
unless they can get a fair return upon the money in- 
vested it shall not be carried on; and that the ac- 
commodations furnished shall not be at rates lower 
than the prevailing rents in the neighborhood. 
Such enterprises have in most cities been success- 
ful. They have paid a fair return on the invest- 
ment, generally about five per cent; in a few cases 
more, in a number of cases less. The most success- 
ful of them are the very excellent buildings of Mr. 
Alfred T. White in Brooklyn, the first of which was 
erected in 1877, and those of the City and Subur- 
ban Homes Company of New York City, which 
date from 1896. In Boston there are also several 
companies which have been uniformly successful 
in this field of eifort. 

The great objection to the building of model 
69 



HOUSING REFORM 

tenements as a solution of the housing problem 
is that it means, as a rule, the complete diversion 
of the interest, energy and financial support of 
benevolent people who genuinely desire to improve 
the condition of the poor away from lines of effort 
that are fundamentally corrective towards those 
that are merely palliative. Until adequate restric- 
tive legislation has been passed and the certainty 
of its enforcement secured, there should be no 
talk of any other form of effort in housing reform. 

Those who contemplate building model tene- 
ments before this has been accomplished, should 
clearly recognize that they are not making any 
substantial contribution to the solution of the 
housing problem; that they are benefiting the 
few to the exclusion of the many; that they are, 
at best, cultivating one small corner, while the 
length and breadth of the field remains untilled. 

The same amount of energy and effort that is 
put ordinarily into the formation of a model 
tenement company and the building and manage- 
ment of one or two groups of model tenements, 
applied with proper intelligence to a movement 
for legislation preventing the construction of bad 
types of dwellings, insuring the construction of 
good ones, and securing the proper maintenance 
of all dwellings, will yield a thousandfold greater 
results. 

The community must see to it that houses 
are not built in the future that are unfit for its 
citizens to live in — in a word, that structurally 

70 



MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 

every tenement house in the future shall be a 
model tenement. The community must also see 
to it that the homes of the poorer classes are 
maintained in a decent and sanitary condition. 
It takes more effort in the beginning; it requires 
more skill, more patience, more imagination; one 
must be willing to wait a few years to see the 
fruition of one's efforts. But when once realized 
they are realized practically for all time. 

The relative extent of the influences resulting 
from the building of a model tenement and the 
influences resulting from the enactment of proper 
housing laws is seen in the actual experience of 
different American cities. The experience of New 
York, where the greatest effort for housing reform 
has been made and for a longer period of time than 
in any other place, affords a striking illustration. 
The movement for housing reform in that city 
was begun over sixty years ago. During that time 
various similar movements have been organized at 
intervals of about ten years. The first organized 
movement was forty years ago. 

During these forty years, through the efforts of 
philanthropically inclined persons, there have been 
built in the Borough of Manhattan 25 groups of 
model tenements equivalent to 89 separate houses, 
providing accommodations for 3588 families or 
17,940 persons. In the same period of time the 
speculative builder has built approximately 27,100 
tenement houses, most of them of a very objec- 
tionable type, unsanitary buildings, with many 

71 



HOUSING REFORM 

dark rooms, narrow air-shafts, improper ventila- 
tion, inadequate plumbing and absence of proper 
sanitary conveniences, insufficient privacy and 
great danger in case of fire. In these buildings 
are housed approximately 253,510 families or over 
one million and a quarter of people (1,267,550). 
That is, while philanthropic people in this period 
have been building model tenements for 17,000 
people, the ordinary builder, unrestrained by ade- 
quate restrictive legislation, has provided unsan- 
itary homes for 1,267,550 people. 

In other words, for every 13 people who have 
been provided with model tenements, 1000 others 
have been condemned to live in unsanitary ones. 

Had the same effort which went to the building 
and management of these model tenements been 
expended in securing the enactment and enforce- 
ment of proper housing laws, most of the housing 
evils in New York City would not exist to-day. 
That this is not a theoretical view is fully proven 
by the operation of the present tenement house 
law. This law, enacted in 1901, was the first 
adequate legislation to control and regulate the 
future type of tenement house in this city and 
ensure the building of houses with sufficient light 
and ventilation, proper sanitation, privacy and 
reasonable protection against fire. Every house 
built under its operation is, in these essential 
particulars, equal to the best model tenements 
constructed in New York in recent years. 

During the period of seven years in which this 
72 



MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 

law has been in operation philanthropic persons 
interested in the building of model tenements have 
built 13 groups of buildings, equivalent to about 
37 separate houses, providing living accommoda- 
tions for 1 87 1 families or 9,355 persons. During 
the same period the ordinary commercial specu- 
lative builder, building for his own profit and with- 
out any thought of the welfare of his tenants, has 
built 21,761 houses providing accommodations 
for 253,255 families or over one million and a 
quarter persons (1,266,275), equal in the essential 
respects above noted to these model tenements. 

To put it in another way, philanthropy in this 
period has provided but seven-tenths of one per 
cent of the improved living conditions while 99^^ 
per cent has been provided by the speculative 
builder restrained and controlled by wise legisla- 
tion. 

And this has all been brought about by the 
enactment of a law which compels the building of 
proper houses and forbids the erection of others. 

Houses once built stay a long time. It will be 
generations before bad types of houses are de- 
stroyed, and when structurally wrong, it is diffi- 
cult, almost impossible, to adequately improve 
them. 



73 



VIII 

MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND MUNICIPAL 
REGULATION 



VIII 

MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND MUNICIPAL 
REGULATION 

WITH the increasing trend in this country 
in recent years toward municipal opera- 
tion of public utilities and the extension 
of municipal functions generally, there has been a 
growing demand for the construction and manage- 
ment of tenement houses by the municipality. 

It is no part of the function of this book to enter 
upon a discussion of state socialism or the relative 
advantages and disadvantages of the municipal 
operation of public utilities. The question we 
have to consider is whether the housing problem 
in any given city will be best solved by having 
the municipality undertake the building and man- 
agement of tenement houses. 

This is a question which must be settled by 
each city with reference to its experience in the 
conduct of its municipal affairs. The experience 
of other American cities in this direction must also 
be taken advantage of. 

Now what are the conclusions which lead to the 
belief that the solution of the housing problem is 
to be found along such lines? The argument 

77 



HOUSING REFORM 

most commonly advanced by the advocates of 
municipal tenements is that such enterprises have 
been carried on, on a very large scale, in other 
countries, especially in Germany and Great Brit- 
ain, and have been very successful. 

That municipal tenements have succeeded in 
Europe, is hardly a reason for urging such an 
experiment in America. Political conditions here 
are totally diiferent. Here there is not the same 
tenure of office in municipal administration. 
Permanency of administration is essential to suc- 
cess in such enterprises. The shifting of respon- 
sible officers every two or four years in itself 
precludes the possibility of success. 

Moreover, no European city — certainly not the 
great cities of England, Scotland and Germany 
where such enterprises have had their greatest suc- 
cess — has had to deal with anything but a homoge- 
neous population. No such city has been called 
upon as American cities are called upon to as- 
similate a constantly increasing crowd of immi- 
grants, representing nearly every nationality in 
the world. Nor have such cities had to face the 
problem of adjusting their municipal government 
to widely varying standards and methods of living, 
hampered by the inability of the varied population 
to speak and understand a common language. 

The advocates of municipal tenements, recog- 
nizing that many of the housing evils of to-day are 
due to the failure of individual landlords to realize 
their responsibilities, undoubtedly believe that if 

78 



MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 

once the city becomes a landlord it will have a 
higher sense of responsibility, and that the public 
will hold it to a higher standard of administration. 
It is also probably their view, even though not 
often consciously expressed, that the city will not 
enter upon such an enterprise with the idea of 
making money from it, and that, therefore, the 
money that now goes to the profit of landlords and 
builders could be devoted either to the reduction 
of rents or to the building of better houses and 
the provision of more comforts and conveniences 
than are now enjoyed by the ordinary tenement- 
house dweller. 

Taking up the first of these arguments, that a 
higher standard of administration in the manage- 
ment of tenement houses may be expected from 
the city government than is now had from numer- 
ous individual owners, let us consider what basis 
in fact there is in the experience of any city in 
America to warrant such a belief. In the first 
place, who are the people who actually will manage 
the municipal tenements? In every American 
city, if this experiment were undertaken, the 
management would necessarily be left to one of 
two classes of persons: either politicians, ap- 
pointed to office for political reasons, or persons 
appointed to office as a result of competitive civil 
service examination. 

Is there any doubt as to the kind of tenement 
house management that would result from placing 
the control of numerous tenements in the hands 

79 



HOUSING REFORM 

of the ordinary politician? Hardly more than 
mere allusion need be made to the obvious oppor- 
tunities for political patronage afforded by the 
municipal operation of tenement houses. How 
difficult it would be to withstand the appeals of 
the district leader that families about to be dis- 
possessed for failure to pay their rent promptly 
should be permitted to remain in the city's 
tenements until such time as they could hope to 
meet their obligations; and how that time would 
lengthen from month to month ! How important 
would be the power before election time of assign- 
ing the municipal dwellers to various districts, 
and what tempting opportunities this would offer 
for the colonizing of voters ! City life is sufficiently 
complex now and the municipal problem suf- 
ficiently difficult, without further encumbering it 
with the numerous complications which would 
result from municipal tenements. 

On the other hand, what sort of administration 
of such enterprises could be expected from the 
kind of person that would be appointed as a result 
of a civil service examination? Anyone who has 
administered public office in any of our large 
cities and been compelled to appoint his sub- 
ordinates by this method knows how difficult it is, 
as a rule, to secure in this way, men of the requisite 
experience and capacity for administrative posi- 
tions. 

In addition to the difficulties to be encountered 
in securing the right kind of officers to administer 

80 



MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 

such enterprises, are the very serious difficulties 
with which public officers must contend, in the 
nature of restrictive legislation, which hampers 
the free management of public affairs — provisions 
of city charters and various enactments of legis- 
latures framed with an intent to prevent corrup- 
tion, and all of which would especially hamper and 
obstruct such an official in the performance of his 
duties. For instance, in several cities no contract 
amounting to $i,ooo or more can be let without 
public bidding and without advertisement for a 
period of several weeks, and then the official 
in question is compelled by law to award such 
contract to the lowest bidder. 

If cities are to embark upon municipal operation 
of tenement houses, most of our present laws with 
regard to the conduct of public affairs will have 
to be wiped off the statute books. The civil ser- 
vice laws in many cases will also prove a serious 
bar to proper and efficient administration. The 
inability of a public officer to readily and promptly 
discharge an incompetent employe would seriously 
complicate matters. What a delicious situation 
it would be where the janitor or housekeeper of 
a tenement house could not be discharged for 
incompetence except after a trial, with the pro- 
ceedings subject to review by the courts upon 
certiorari! 

If the city is to enter the field of building opera- 
tions and compete with private capital and is to 
build its houses without thought of profit, private 
6 8i 



HOUSING REFORM 

enterprise will in a short time be driven out of the 
field. It can not compete with municipal under- 
taking. The result will be that in a short time 
the municipality will find that it must occupy 
the entire field. The only houses that will then 
be built for the accommodation of the poor will 
be built by the city. Private builders will have 
ceased to operate. What this means can best be 
appreciated when it is understood that in the City 
of New York for example, one hundred and twelve 
million dollars' worth of tenement houses were 
built during the year 1906. That the city should 
embark upon so vast an enterprise as the provi- 
sion of dwellings for the majority of its citizens 
is not to be contemplated. 

This question, however, is not to be determined 
upon any theoretical basis. The question which 
each community must face is: What is there 
in the experience of that particular city in its 
municipal administration that would indicate that 
those entrusted with the administration of the 
city's affairs are likely to build and manage tene- 
ment houses in a better way than they are now 
built and managed by individual owners? 

This is a matter which it should not be diificult 
to decide at any time. The citizens of any com- 
munity have before them at all times a constant 
object lesson as to the efficiency of their municipal 
officers and the desirability of entrusting to them 
new and enlarged functions. Shall we bond 
ourselves, the citizens may ask, or increase our 

82 



MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 

tax rate, to enter upon the experiment of munic- 
ipal ownership and operation of tenement houses, 
and by this means secure better homes for the 
masses of our working people? Are we likely, not 
merely with our present administration but with 
the kind of administration that we have generally 
had in past years in this town, to have such tene- 
ment houses properly managed? 

The decision must necessarily rest upon the 
answer that can be made to the questions: How 
are our city officers performing the functions with 
which they are now charged? Are our streets 
being properly cleaned? Is our police force being 
wisely administered? Do gambling houses and 
evil resorts exist? Do public officers sell privileges 
to practice iniquity? Do corruption and crime 
flourish? Are our public charities administered as 
well as they would be administered through pri- 
vate societies? Is our public school system what 
it should be? Is our Water Department a source 
of revenue to the city? Are the city's affairs in 
general adequately administered? Upon the an- 
swers to such questions must the decision rest. 
It would seem that we can wisely postpone so 
important an experiment until we have achieved 
better municipal administration of those functions 
of government which now engage the attention of 
the authorities. 

There is no arbitrary principle which can be laid 
down deciding that one thing is a municipal 
function and another is not. The determination 

83 



HOUSING REFORM 

of what shall be done by the city and what shall 
be done by individuals must rest primarily upon 
the consideration of which can do it most advan- 
tageously for the community. If it is clear that 
the city can best perform any particular function 
with the kind of administration a community is 
likely to have most of the time, — not the kind it 
may happen to have at some particular and ex- 
ceptional period, but the kind that its own expe- 
rience through a number of years indicates is 
generally likely to prevail, — it is clear that the 
city should be entrusted with that function. If, 
however, experience indicates the opposite, it is 
far better to continue to leave to private indi- 
viduals the performance of these responsibilities. 
Moreover, what is to be gained by having the 
government thus extend its functions? Do the 
advocates of such a plan expect to demonstrate 
that houses which are sanitary can be built and 
pay a fair return on the money invested? This has 
been demonstrated over and over again in the 
past fifty years. Do they expect that by this 
method they will be sure that all tenement houses 
which are erected in the future will be sanitary and 
provide proper accommodations for the persons 
who are to live in them? This result has already 
been obtained by tenement house laws, under 
which no houses can be constructed which do not 
provide such accommodations. If the laws did 
not accomplish this result, the remedy would be 
to amend the laws. 

84 



MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 

The determination of this whole question is to 
be found in a middle course between the two 
extremes urged. Housing evils can not be 
remedied if private individuals are permitted, 
without restraint, to neglect the rights, comforts 
and welfare of their tenants. On the other hand, 
housing evils in America are not to be remedied by 
having government embark upon the experiment 
of the municipal ownership and operation of 
tenement houses. The solution of the question is 
to be found in the regulation of such enterprises 
by the state or municipality, as the case may be. 

It is eminently the right of the state and of 
each community to see to it that people are not 
permitted to live under conditions which make for 
poverty, sickness, disease and death; which pro- 
duce pauper, criminal and vicious citizens, whom 
the state is subsequently called upon to support 
and reform. 

The state has not only a right but a duty to 
perform and must say to private individuals: 
**Thus far you may go, but no farther. You shall 
not be permitted to build a house in which people 
ought not to live; you shall not be permitted to 
so mis-manage your house that it is unhealthful 
or dangerous for people to live in it.'' It is along 
the lines of such regulation that the solution of the 
housing problem is to be found in every American 
community. 

It is by the exercise of the police power of the 
state that this problem is to be met. The state 

85 



HOUSING REFORM 

can most appropriately extend the strong arm of 
the law toward those weaker members of the 
community who are unable to protect themselves. 
It is clearly within its duties to protect the com- 
munity to the fullest degree from the consequences 
of lack of foresight and from the willingness on 
the part of individuals to exploit their weaker 
brothers. 

There are, however, constitutional and legal 
limitations which must be observed, and it is well 
that there are such limitations. It is not the 
function of the state to impose upon its citizens 
through legislative mandate the desires of a lim- 
ited number of the community to secure conve- 
niences and comforts. Housing legislation must 
deal solely with necessities, with things that re- 
late to the public welfare. It must distinguish 
between what is desirable and what is essential, 
between what a philanthropist may voluntarily do 
and what the state may legally require. 



86 



IX 

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING 
LAW 



IX 

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING 
LAW 

IF the solution of the housing problem is to be 
found chiefly in legislation preventing the 
erection of objectionable buildings and se- 
curing the adequate maintenance of all buildings, 
it is important that such legislation should be based 
upon sound principles and its limitations clearly 
defined. 

Such laws are pre-eminently for the use of lay- 
men. They must be clearly understood not only 
by builders and architects, but also by owners of 
small properties, who are often of foreign extrac- 
tion, frequently illiterate and unable to understand 
complicated legal phrases. The first requisite, 
therefore, is clearness. What the law intends 
must be quickly and readily grasped. The laws 
should also be concise in form. Their provisions 
should be expressed in short, separate sentences, 
not in long, involved paragraphs. Precision is of 
vital importance. All terms should be carefully 
defined. On the other hand, acts of this nature 
must be so drawn as to stand the test in the courts. 
In a word, they should be as if written by laymen 

89 



HOUSING REFORM 

for laymen, and yet at the same time so carefully 
drawn that every word has its exact legal weight 
and says neither more nor less than is intended. 

In formulating such legislation, one of the essen- 
tial considerations is the importance of securing 
uniformity of treatment for all persons affected 
by its provisions. There must be no discrimina- 
tion between individuals, nor any opportunity for 
such discrimination. 

One of the first questions to be determined is 
with reference to the granting of discretionary 
power to the various enforcing authorities. In 
the earlier attempts at housing reform, the law- 
making bodies as a rule hesitate to formulate with 
care and precision the exact requirements to be 
imposed upon builders and owners. Instead, 
realizing that their insufficient technical knowledge 
makes them unable to anticipate the various 
practical questions that may arise, they enact 
sweeping prohibitions and leave the details to 
the judgment of the Superintendent of Buildings 
or Commissioner of Health. 

While theoretically in many cases it would seem 
desirable to entrust discretionary power to the 
enforcing officials — in fact many people believe 
that laws of this nature can not be fairly enforced 
without it — the experience of most cities shows 
that the granting of discretionary power has in 
nearly every case led to abuse and ultimately to 
nullification of the law. If one stops to consider 
it, it is not strange that this should be so. What 

90 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 

generally happens is well illustrated in the ex- 
perience of New York City. 

Here in 1895 it was provided in a law enacted 
in that year, that no tenement house erected after 
that date should occupy more than 65 per cent of 
the lot. This was the clear intention of the 
framers of the law. They, however, added a 
clause to the effect that where the light and ven- 
tilation of a building was materially improved the 
Superintendent of Buildings might permit a greater 
percentage of the lot to be occupied, but in no 
case more than 75 per cent. In a word, they de- 
parted from their original purpose of definitely 
limiting the amount of land to be occupied, be- 
lieving that the enforcing officer might be per- 
mitted to use his judgment and permit a larger 
proportion to be covered in special cases. 

Now what actually happened? Within a year, 
every tenement house that was erected occupied 
the full 75 per cent of the lot. No one even thought 
of covering any less and from the very nature of 
things, nothing else could have been expected. 
If one architect presents a plan for a new building 
and the Superintendent of Buildings permits him 
to occupy 75 per cent of the lot, a competing archi- 
tect a few weeks later in submitting his plans will 
demand that he too be permitted to occupy as 
much. So gradually every architect insists upon 
his right to cover as much of the lot as his pre- 
decessors have done. 

There are, however, graver abuses connected 
91 



HOUSING REFORM 

with the grant and exercise of discretionary power. 
Nothing leads to municipal corruption so rapidly 
as leaving indefinitely to a single official the deter- 
mination of what shall be done in individual cases 
without possibility of review. Favored architects 
in a short time, because of their friendship or 
political influence, or because of a corrupt under- 
standing with the enforcing official, are gradually 
able to crowd out of business competitors without 
these advantages or who are unwilling to adopt 
the methods employed by their less scrupulous 
rivals. In a short time a situation develops by 
which a few firms of architects or builders control 
the entire business of a community. 

Further forms of corruption and favoritism are 
found in practices which flow from this situation, 
some of which have become the more accepted 
and most successful forms of modern municipal 
corruption. The methods of direct stealing from 
the city which were in vogue some years ago are 
no longer employed by even the most corrupt 
public officials. Most of the municipal corruption 
at the present time is to be found in the furnishing 
of inside information by which the political friends 
or business associates of public officers are enabled 
to make advantageous contracts and business 
deals — the "Honest Graft" of recent fame. 

The way in which this operates in the building 
industry and in the enforcement of building laws 
is intimately associated with this question of dis- 
cretionary power. What often happens is that 

92 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 

the corrupt city oificial refuses to grant to some 
architect or builder what he has granted to many 
others, stating that the matter is within his dis- 
cretion. After several negotiations it then devel- 
ops that if the contract for erecting the building 
in question — which may in many cases amount 
to thousands of dollars — is placed with the right 
firm of builders, or if a certain kind of material 
is used, it becomes possible for the city official 
"upon further consideration of the matter" and 
the presentation of "new arguments'' to grant 
authority to utilize methods of construction which 
had previously been denied. 

1 1 is a very bad principle to make your enforc- 
ing officer also your law-making body. The two 
functions should be kept separate. If the Super- 
intendent of Buildings or the Health Commissioner 
is competent to determine what the requirements 
shall be in a given case, there is no reason why 
he should not indicate these facts in advance to 
the members of the Legislature and have such 
determination embodied in the laws of the State, 
thus enabling all citizens to know with certainty 
what they may do and may not do, and so remove 
opportunities for favoritism and corruption. 

Every group of persons taking up housing reform 
will have to face this situation. Pressure will 
always be brought to bear upon them by the local 
enforcing authorities to grant to them large dis- 
cretionary power. Experience shows that this is 
not desirable. With regard to buildings erected 

93 



HOUSING REFORM 

in the future, there should be no discretionary 
power of any kind. In considering, however, 
laws requiring the structural alteration or recon- 
struction of the older houses, the situation is 
different. Here it will be found, owing to the 
widely varying conditions in different buildings, 
which make impracticable the carrying out of rigid 
requirements, that a limited discretion must be 
given to the enforcing authorities. 

In general, however, every effort should be made 
to avoid indefinite and vague grants of power. 
Pains should be taken, even though it takes a 
longer time and involves more work, to state in the 
law precisely what owners and builders may do. 
Wherever it is necessary to grant discretionary 
power it should be limited and clearly defined. 
Provision should be made for proper publicity 
in connection with the exercise of such power, 
so that those interested may acquaint themselves 
with the rulings that have been made and may 
insist that the privileges which have been granted 
to others shall be equally granted to them. 

In formulating a housing law its relation to 
other similar statutes must be taken into careful 
consideration. In nearly every community there 
will be found sanitary codes or ordinances, build- 
ing and health laws and plumbing regulations. 
In each one of these will be found something bear- 
ing on housing conditions. Any tenement house 
act to be effective must be framed with reference 
to these other closely allied subjects. There is 

94 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 

danger in this work, especially where various 
portions of housing codes are formulated by sub- 
committees of a larger body, of framing each 
individual provision only with reference to itself 
and without regard to its place in the general 
scheme or plan. Care must be taken to prevent 
conflict between different provisions of the same 
act and also to avoid similar conflict between the 
provisions of the housing law in question and 
similar enactments already on the statute books. 

Future tendencies must be considered as well 
as present conditions. An excellent illustration 
of this is had in the failure to realize in earlier 
years the developments that would come with 
regard to the greater depth of the buildings and the 
necessity of larger yard spaces. When the first 
Tenement House Act in America was passed in 
1867, it provided that no building erected after 
that date should have a yard less than 10 feet 
in depth. As a matter of fact, at that time few 
builders thought of building a tenement house with 
a yard less than 50 feet in depth. The provision 
of the law, therefore, was of little practical effect. 

If the persons who were responsible for the 
framing of that law forty years ago had realized 
that in subsequent years conditions would seriously 
change and that there might be a desire on the part 
of builders to cover more and more of the land 
by building the houses deeper on the lots and thus 
leaving less and less space open for light and air 
they undoubtedly would have incorporated in 

95 



HOUSING REFORM 

the Statutes of that time a provision that the yards 
in future tenement houses should be of no less 
depth than they actually were at the time, namely, 
50 feet. This could have been done then without 
difficulty. 

No one objects to the prohibition of something 
he does not want to do. 1 1 would at the immediate 
time it is true have been no more controlling than 
the provision for yards of 10 feet, because no one 
then desired to build houses deeper than 50 feet; 
but it would have had incalculable value in setting 
a standard which presumably could have been 
adhered to in subsequent years. If the law had 
then fixed the minimum depth of yards at 50 
feet there would not have been through all those 
following forty years a gradual encroachment 
upon the yard space, and the building of the house 
first 60 feet deep, then 70 feet deep, then 80 feet 
deep and finally 90 feet deep. The builder, finding 
that the law prohibited any such depth and 
required that a yard of 50 feet be left, would 
have found no opportunity to change and the 
consequent artificial stimulation of land values 
would not have arisen. It is a very wise maxim 
never to set your standards lower than the 
standards that are actually adhered to at the time 
the law is enacted. 

If the prevailing height of tenement houses that 
are being erected in a given community is three 
stories and you are formulating a new housing 
law, keep the height that the law permits such 

96 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 

buildings to be erected at the standard which 
then exists, namely, three stories. If the then 
standard is five stories you cannot hope, in all 
probability, to reduce it. Do not assume that it 
is unnecessary to make an enactment upon that 
subject and make no mention of it in your law, 
but embody in your statute the standard which 
you fmd existing at that time, unless the sentiment 
of the community is strongly in favor of a higher 
one. The failure to observe these principles may 
mean that you will have a city built up of six- 
story tenements instead of three-story dwellings, 
with all that that means in congestion of popula- 
tion, prevalence of tuberculosis and other social 
problems. 



97 



X 

WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

WHAT, it may be asked, are the important 
things which a housing law should con- 
tain? While requirements will differ 
necessarily in each community, there are certain 
fundamental things which should be found in every 
housing law. They must all alike regulate the con- 
struction of new buildings, provide for the proper 
maintenance of all buildings and to a greater or 
less extent embody plans for the improvement 
and alteration of the older buildings. In addition, 
they must deal with questions of light, ventilation, 
sanitation, plumbing, drainage, fire protection, 
and to some extent with certain social questions. 
Probably the most difficult question to deal with 
is the question of light and ventilation — most 
difficult in the large cities, least understood in the 
smaller ones, but fortunately more easy to handle 
in the latter because of the lack as yet of any 
serious evils in such places. How are adequate 
light and ventilation to be secured? In the first 
place, the problem of getting it in buildings erected 
in the future is quite distinct from the problem 
of getting it in buildings that are already built. 

lOI 



HOUSING REFORM 

Let US consider first the buildings hereafter to 
be erected. Here it is necessary to make sure 
that every room, every hall, every water-closet 
compartment and bath room, every cellar, in a 
word, every part of the building, shall have ade- 
quate light and ventilation. How is this to be 
done? In the first place the street on which the 
building is to be located must be wide enough to 
insure this. The streets are already there and of 
course cannot be changed. But if a street is too 
narrow, the law must prohibit the erection there 
of houses of undue height. 

The next important step is to make sure that 
the yard at the rear of the building is of sufficient 
size, because all the light and air that come into 
the rear rooms must come through this yard. 
Moreover, such yards must be considered from 
a neighborhood point of view. Light and ventila- 
tion must not be considered with reference to a 
particular building only, but with regard to the ef- 
fect if the whole block were similarly built up. In 
general the only adequate, rational and satisfac- 
tory method is to regulate the size of open spaces, 
left to provide light and air, in relation to the 
height of the building. Where buildings are but 
two stories high, a yard 20 feet deep may be en- 
tirely adequate; where, however, buildings are six 
stories high a much larger yard is necessary, and 
where they are twenty stories high and the neigh- 
boring buildings are of similar height, very much 
larger open spaces are essential. 

102 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

Important as this principle is, there is hardly 
any American city which has as yet adopted it. 
Heretofore the method of determining these ques- 
tions has been largely by rule of thumb. 

It will not do, however, to concern oneself 
solely with the width of the street and the size of 
the yards. If a house is built more than 24 feet 
deep, it will necessarily exceed two rooms in 
depth. The minute it does this a host of problems 
arise. When it is but two rooms deep everything 
is simple — one room opens on the street, the other 
on the yard. When, however, it is four rooms 
deep, and even seven or eight rooms deep, the 
situation becomes complicated. The problem is 
this: How are the interior rooms to be adequately 
lighted and ventilated? 

In the earliest days no effort was made to pro- 
vide light or ventilation for such rooms. The 
earliest types of houses that were built specifically 
as tenements, were houses that were four rooms 
in depth: one room opening on the street, another 
on the yard, and between them interior rooms 
securing their only light and ventilation through 
doorways into the outer rooms. 

In somewhat later years an effort was made to 
secure some ventilation for such inner rooms, by 
requiring that they should have air-flues extending 
to the roof. In many cities this resulted in the 
construction of air-flues about the size of one brick; 
in some, in the building of chimneys. Gradually 
from this developed the so-called ''air-shaft," and 

103 



HOUSING REFORM 

later came the requirement in the law that all 
rooms should open either directly to the outer air 
or upon air-shafts. 

None of these requirements accomplished the 
purpose that was intended because they lacked 
sufficient precision. To provide simply that a 
room shall open upon an air-shaft is of little value 
as a means of furnishing light, if it results, as it 
has, in rooms so dark that one has to light a 
match to fmd the shaft! Also of little value for 
ventilating purposes if the air in the shaft is so 
stagnant that tenants prefer to keep their windows 
closed. 

The next step was to require that air-shafts 
should be of a certain minimum area in square feet. 
This also failed of its purpose because architects 
and builders then proceeded to build long, narrow 
air-shafts but a few inches in width and many feet 
in length. These provided neither adequate light 
nor proper ventilation, but complied with the legal 
requirements. 

Finally there was evolved the present system, 
found in the New York law, by which every room 
is required to open either upon the street or upon 
a yard of a certain minimum depth, or upon a 
court of a certain minimum width and length, with 
the further provision that these minimum spaces 
shall be materially increased with an increase in 
the height of the building, and may be decreased 
for a lower building. Provision must also be 
made for the frequent renewal of the air at 

104 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

the bottom of courts by means of tunnels or 
intakes. 

Only after thirty-four years of effort have we ar- 
rived at an adequate method of insuring proper 
light and ventilation in new tenement houses. 

But even with all of this done, there is still 
more to be considered in securing adequate light 
and ventilation. The size of the rooms must also 
be provided for and a minimum established. 
Here, too, it is not safe to rely upon the amount of 
cubic air space as a standard any more than it 
was safe to count upon providing that courts or 
shafts should be of a certain area. A minimum 
height for rooms must be fixed as well as a mini- 
mum floor area. Similar measures should be taken 
with regard to public halls and stairs, water- 
closet compartments and bathrooms, and cellars. 

The problem of letting light and air into dark 
and badly ventilated rooms already built is a 
totally different and very difficult one. The errors 
of former years are now unfortunately crystallized 
in brick and mortar. In most cases it is impossible 
to make changes that will be really adequate. 
Rooms that were originally not provided with 
windows opening directly to the outer air can 
never be made entirely satisfactory. 

All that anyone can hope to do is to make such 
houses reasonably habitable, letting in as much 
light and air as can be obtained by methods that 
are practicable. Wherever it is possible to cut 
windows into an exterior wall letting light and air 

105 



HOUSING REFORM 

enter the room from a yard or from open spaces 
on adjoining premises, it should be done. Where 
this cannot be done, there are two methods by 
which light can be provided for interior rooms 
in old buildings. The simplest method is by 
requiring the cutting of a large window in the 
partition separating the dark interior room from 
an adjoining room. By this method a consider- 
able amount of light is let into the room which 
before was quite dark. The ventilation is also 
improved. Such window to be adequate should 
be about 3 by 5 feet in size and these dimensions 
should be specified in any law attempting to deal 
with the subject. 

The other method of supplying light to interior 
rooms is by requiring the construction in the old 
buildings of a new light shaft. This, however, 
is a difficult matter. In the first place it generally 
involves heavy expense. It often means the 
weakening of the building structurally to such 
an extent that very substantial alterations become 
necessary. It also means as a rule losing rentable 
floor space on each floor. There is of course no 
use in requiring an alteration of this nature unless 
the light shaft that is thus provided is of sufficient 
size to really furnish adequate light and ventila- 
tion to the interior rooms in question. If the 
shaft is an inner one, that is, enclosed on four 
sides, it will be found that a shaft less than 10 feet 
in its minimum dimension for a four-story building 
is not adequate. Generally it is not practicable 

106 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

to construct a shaft of this size in an ordinary 
house. 

Moreover, a new shaft of this kind is a fire 
menace unless built of fireproof material and to 
require a new fireproof shaft in the older, non- 
fireproof buildings is somewhat of an anomaly. 
On the whole, except in rare instances, it will be 
found that this method of securing light and 
ventilation is not one which can be wisely em- 
bodied in a housing law. 

The requirement of structural changes of any 
kind in an existing building should be approached 
with great care, and only those things which are 
vitally essential to the welfare of the community 
should be included in a housing law. 

The alterations required must not only be 
practicable from a structural point of view but 
financially practicable also. It is manifestly 
unwise to impose upon the owner of a building 
requirements in the way of structural improve- 
ments that involve expenditures out of proportion 
to its revenue-producing possibilities. If there are 
conditions in individual buildings which render 
them unfit for human habitation, there should be 
no hesitation in forbidding their occupancy. 
This, however, is a very different matter from 
requiring by law specific structural alterations in 
all buildings of a certain class. 

Every housing law should contain for both new 
and old houses requirements with regard to sani- 

107 



HOUSING REFORM 

tation, plumbing, drainage and adequate water 
supply. 

Here are involved some of the most important 
problems that a community has to deal with. 
All those questions which may be described under 
the term "good housekeeping" are included: 
care of the premises, proper maintenance, cleanli- 
ness, condition of the out-premises, absence of 
poisonous sewer gases, dampness, &c. Here, too, 
the problem of securing proper sanitation in new 
buildings is very different from that of obtaining 
it in those houses that are already built. In 
buildings that are erected in the future it is a 
clear proposition that wherever there is a system 
of public sewers, every house intended for occu- 
pancy by more than one family (and indeed every 
dwelling house) should be equipped with a proper 
system of modern sanitary plumbing. Nothing 
else is to be thought of. 

In a community of any considerable size, to 
compel people to use antiquated privies instead 
of modern water-closets, is a relic of barbarism. 
If the community is not large enough to be able 
to afford a system of public sewers, there is not 
the slightest reason why multiple dwellings should 
be erected, as there is plenty of room and land 
values are low, and it is entirely feasible for each 
family to have its own dwelling. In general no 
community ought to permit the erection of a 
tenement house on a street in which there is no 
sewer. 

1 08 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

It should not be difficult to secure modern, 
sanitary plumbing in any city. The essential 
things are that the materials used should be of 
sufficiently good quality to stand the average wear. 
Plumbing pipes should be of a material that is 
durable and does not lend itself easily to leaks. 
Fixtures should be of a modern nature and simple 
in form, not some complicated watch-like mechan- 
ism easily put out of order, nor of such antiquated 
form as to lead to sanitary abuses and to render 
difficult their being kept in a cleanly condition. 
Joints in pipes should be gas-tight; all fixtures 
should be adequately trapped and vented; plumb- 
ing should so far as practicable be ''open'* or 
exposed; sewer connections should generally be 
separate; the use of earthenware or tile sewer 
pipes should be prohibited; objectionable types 
of closets, such as long hoppers and pan closets, 
should not be permitted. 

Adequate drainage of out-premises and of roofs 
should be accomplished by means of proper leaders, 
gutters and drains. In multiple dwellings each 
family should have its own separate water-closet. 
The use of such conveniences in common leads to 
serious social evils and should not be tolerated in 
future buildings. In addition, such conveniences 
should be entirely within the control of the indi- 
vidual family and should not be located in public 
parts of the house. This is essential not only for 
the comfort and convenience of the family, but also 

109 



HOUSING REFORM 

advantageous to the owner as it enables him to 
centre responsibility for sanitary abuses. 

Each family should have its own supply of city 
water in at least one place in the apartment. It 
is useless to expect people to be clean or to be 
good citizens if they do not have a generous supply 
of water. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness. 
Involved in this also is the question of preven- 
tion of disease. The workingman must be able to 
maintain his physical condition at a high standard 
if he is to resist attacks of disease. There should 
therefore be, as a matter of legal requirement, 
an adequate supply of water in all dwelling houses. 

The question of providing stationary washtubs 
and bathtubs is, however, quite different. These 
must be considered as in the nature of conveni- 
ences not necessities and matters the law should 
not deal with. It will be generally found, how- 
ever, that enlightened builders will in self-interest 
make provision for stationary tubs, where the law 
requires them to provide a sink and running water. 
The question of whether housing laws should 
require builders to furnish bathtubs in new houses 
is one which has perhaps been debated more than 
any other question. There is no doubt that the 
opportunity for bathing, and bathing frequently, 
is a necessity. But if an ample supply of run- 
ning water is provided for every family, they 
can avail themselves of opportunities for frequent 
bathing, though of course not with the same con- 
venience and comfort as if bathtubs were provided. 

no 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

The experience of New York in this regard 
may perhaps be suggestive for other communities. 
When the Tenement House Commission of 1900 
was considering these questions it had urged upon 
it with considerable earnestness the suggestion 
that the tenement house law should include a 
compulsory requirement for a bathtub in every 
apartment in each tenement house erected in the 
future. Many others urged that if this could not 
be done, the law should require a limited number 
of baths to be provided for the use of the tenants, 
in the cellar or some other public part of the 
building. 

After careful consideration of this whole ques- 
tion the Commission reached the conclusion that 
any requirement of law for baths to be used in 
common by the tenants of a tenement house, 
would be unwise, would set back the movement 
for bathing facilities many years and would result 
in the abuse and ultimate removal of such equip- 
ment. It was also felt that to require a private 
bath for each family as a matter of law, was not 
practicable and might with difficulty be sustained 
if attacked in the courts. The Commission, how- 
ever, having provided that in new tenements each 
family should have its own private water-closet 
within the apartment, believed that builders would 
at the same time on their own initiative add a 
bathtub, as this could be done at very little cost 
and would mean that the apartment would bring 
a slightly increased rental. That this view of the 

III 



HOUSING REFORM 

case was sound has been amply proved by the 
result under eight years' operation of the tenement 
house law. Although that law requires no bath- 
ing facilities whatever in new tenements, in 86 
per cent of all the new houses erected, private 
baths for each family have been provided by the 
builders, of their own volition. 

The proper maintenance of all tenement houses, 
as well as of all dwellings occupied by the poor, is 
a question that vitally concerns every community. 
Primarily the evils which are generally found are 
due to two factors: The neglect of the owner to 
care for those parts of the building that are within 
his control, and secondly the neglect and misuse 
by the tenants of the facilities with which they 
are provided. Let there be no mistake with 
regard to this. This is not a one-sided question. 
The unsanitary conditions which exist in dwellings 
of this kind are not by any means entirely due to 
the tenants; nor are they on the other hand en- 
tirely due to the landlord. The responsibility 
must be shared by each. 

Every housing law must provide some scheme 
by which houses of this nature may be maintained 
in proper condition. An important factor in 
this situation is the requirement that where 
buildings are occupied by a number of families 
there shall be a resident caretaker or janitor on 
the premises responsible to the landlord for the 
conditions. In all of the larger buildings — that 
is, where there are more than six families in a 

I 12 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

house — this is essential. It is desirable even 
where there are fewer families, but not always 
practicable from the owner's point of view. Of 
course where the owner resides in the house him- 
self, as is frequently the case, such a requirement 
is not necessary. 

Experience shows that the danger points in the 
tenement house from a sanitary point of view are 
the public parts of the building for which no one 
is responsible: cellars, yards, roofs, halls, stairs, 
out-premises, &c. What is everybody's business 
is generally nobody's business. Individual tenants 
do not feel much responsibility or concern for 
the care of such portions of the building; being 
used in common, they are apt to be frequently 
abused, and it is almost impossible under these 
circumstances, to fix responsibility for abuse. 

A housing law should provide that all parts of 
the building shall be kept clean and free from accu- 
mulations of dirt; that the owner shall be required 
to thoroughly cleanse all parts of the building 
whenever directed by the appropriate authorities; 
that the cellar floors shall be free from dampness; 
that the cellar walls and ceilings shall be white- 
washed or painted at reasonable intervals; that 
the house and all portions of it shall be kept in 
good repair; that the roof shall not leak and that 
all rain water shall be carried off to the sewer, 
where a sewer exists, so as to prevent dampness 
in the walls or in the yards or areas; that proper 
receptacles for ashes, garbage and other waste 
8 113 



HOUSING REFORM 

matter shall be provided in sufficient quantity; 
that there shall be running water at least in one 
place on every floor of the building. 

With regard to protection in case of fire, the 
main provision of any housing law is the require- 
ment that there shall be adequate fire-escapes 
for the use of each family so that in the event of 
fire the tenants may have every reasonable 
opportunity to escape without loss of life. The 
standards as to what constitutes adequate fire- 
escapes will differ in different places. In general 
it is clear that fire-escapes of which wooden bal- 
conies or wooden stairs or ladders are an inte- 
gral part are not safe; that rope ladders and all 
similar kinds of appliances, including wire, steel 
and cable ladder fire-escapes, are inadequate for 
houses of this kind. 

Fire-escapes should consist of outside balconies 
either of iron or stone. Iron will be generally 
found to be the best, cheapest and most practica- 
ble. In houses erected in the future the fire- 
escape balconies should be connected by stairs, 
the only satisfactory means of connection, and 
these stairs should be placed at an angle suffi- 
ciently inclined to permit easy descent by the ten- 
ants — not only by able-bodied men used to climb- 
ing ladders, but also by women, children and old 
people. 

It is important that the fire-escapes shall not 
only be adequate but shall seem adequate to the 
tenants so that they will trust themselves to them 

114 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

in case of fire. It is undoubtedly true that most 
people could go up and down a vertical ladder 
such as is provided for many fire-escapes, but 
women, children and old people in the excitement 
and panic of fire will not do so. If that is the 
case, vertical ladders are of little value as fire- 
escapes for tenement houses. 

The fire-escape balconies should be of sufficient 
width, should be strong, should contain openings of 
adequate size and should be so located as to afford 
the quickest escape. The best place for a fire- 
escape balcony is on the front of the building, 
because in case of fire the people naturally run 
to the street; that is the quarter from which they 
are expecting help from the firemen; that is the 
normal place to go. In many cases, however, 
it is necessary for the fire-escapes to be placed on 
the rear of the building as well as on the front. 
This is so in every instance where there are sepa- 
rate apartments in the rear which do not extend 
to the street. In such cases, care should be taken 
to provide for a proper and safe means of egress 
from the yard to the street, as it will do little good 
to allow the tenants to escape to the yard if they 
are trapped there. 

Fire-escapes are quite as much for the use of the 
firemen as they are for the use of the tenants. 
In the large cities they are provided, not only to 
enable the tenants to get out of the building but 
also to enable the firemen to get quickly to the 
fire and rescue those tenants who are unable to 

115 



HOUSING REFORM 

descend in safety. They are also quite as much 
to be used for ascent as for descent. Often the 
best means of escape in a fire is to the roof and 
from the roof of the building to an adjoining house. 
That is why it is generally provided in tenement 
houses that the public stairs shall extend to the 
roof. Often, however, escape this way is cut off. 
Then the fire-escapes become of especial value. 

In addition to providing fire-escapes, fire pro- 
tection in new buildings may be secured through 
the limitation of the height of non-fireproof 
houses and the requirement that the public parts 
of the building, especially those portions that are 
known to be danger points, shall be constructed 
in such way as to safeguard the lives of the tenants. 

Experience shows that in the ordinary tenement 
house one-quarter of all the fires start in the cel- 
lar. The cellars and the public halls and stairs 
are the danger points. It is therefore desirable 
in constructing new houses, to shut off the cellar 
from the rest of the building. This is done in the 
larger cities in the case of buildings five and six 
stories high by requiring the construction of the 
first floor above the cellar to be entirely fireproof — 
that is, iron beams with fireproof filling — and to 
prohibit any openings in this floor. This involves 
having access to the cellar only from the outside 
of the building. It is not quite so convenient for 
the tenants, but it has been found to be entirely 
practicable to have the tenants go out into the 
court or yard to get down into the cellar. Where 

ii6 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

it is necessary to extend a dumbwaiter shaft down 
to the cellar it is desirable to require it to be 
built entirely of fireproof construction and to 
be provided with fireproof, self-closing doors. 

It is strange, that no matter where a tenement 
house fire starts, whether in the apartments on 
the top floor or on the first floor, whether in the 
cellar or in an airshaft, it invariably immediately 
gets to the public halls and stairs of the building, 
which seem to act like a gigantic flue. 1 1 therefore 
becomes especially important to see that the halls 
and stairs of such buildings are fireproof and are 
shut off from the non-fireproof parts of the build- 
ing. 

The type of tenement house that has been 
evolved in New York to meet this situation is one 
in which the stairs and halls are fireproof. They 
are enclosed in brick walls and the floors are 
constructed of iron beams with fireproof filling; 
the stairs are either iron, slate or marble. The 
openings in the walls leading to the apartments are 
provided with self-closing, fireproof doors so that 
if a fire should start in one of the apartments it 
can not '' mushroom out " and spread to the stairs 
and halls and thus to the other apartments. 

This type of house has given eminent satisfac- 
tion in New York. It is practically the main type 
that has been built since the passage of the Tene- 
ment House Act in 1901. During that period of 
eight years, in the Borough of Manhattan alone 
4506 new tenement houses have been built pro- 

117 



HOUSING REFORM 

viding accommodations for 116,789 families, or 
approximately over half a million people. There 
has not, however, in all this time been a single in- 
stance of a bad fire in one of these houses; nor has 
there been any loss of life from fire in one of these 
buildings nor any fire in which any considerable 
financial damage has resulted. Thus far the type 
has stood the test perfectly. 

Beyond this, laws with regard to fire protection 
should concern themselves with seeing that no 
inflammable or dangerous materials are permit- 
ted to be stored in houses of this nature, and that 
no dangerous occupations are carried on in such 
buildings. Bakeries, especially where they boil 
fat, are frequently sources of danger. 

In addition to the questions of light and ventila- 
tion, sanitation, plumbing and drainage, and fire 
protection above described, there are questions 
involved concerning the use and occupancy of 
dwellings, which should be taken into considera- 
tion in every housing law. Cellar dwellings are 
among the first evils to be discovered in many 
places and are nearly always an unnecessary evil. 
Sometimes, in the larger communities where hous- 
ing conditions have been neglected for many 
years, they have to be tolerated for a while. In 
the smaller communities they are nearly always 
unnecessary and should never be tolerated. 

Care, however, must be taken to distinguish 
between cellars that are fit for habitation and those 
that are not. As a rule, most cellars are unfit. 

118 



WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 

A housing law must carefully regulate the occu- 
pancy of such places for living purposes. It 
must establish standards which will ensure proper 
light and ventilation and freedom from dampness. 
The main points to be considered are the height 
and size of rooms, the sources of light and air, 
the height of ceiling above ground and the na- 
ture of the cellar floor, with proper provision for 
keeping out dampness. 

The use of tenement houses by women of im- 
proper character, in close proximity to respectable 
people, is a serious evil in some of the larger 
cities and one that should be guarded against. 
In most places it will not be found necessary to 
include in a tenement house law any provisions 
dealing with this subject. Where, however, the 
evil has appeared in tenement houses it should 
be so penalized that women of this class will at 
once find it to their advantage to remove from 
such buildings. 

Restrictions with regard to the keeping of ani- 
mals on the premises should be included in most 
housing laws. It will not do to prohibit the keep- 
ing of all animals, as people naturally desire to 
keep birds, cats and dogs. But one may with 
reason draw the line at pigs, horses, goats, turtles, 
rabbits, chickens, cows, &c. All of these have 
been encountered in New York's tenement houses. 
This practice, however convenient it may be, is 
unwise from a sanitary point of view. It is not 
good for the animal nor is it good for the people. 

119 



HOUSING REFORM 

Other uses to which tenement houses are often 
put are unwise and should not be permitted. 
Especially should it be made illegal to carry on a 
common lodging house in a tenement house. 
The mingling of the ordinary lodging house patron 
with the tenement house dweller is not a good 
thing for the community. 



120 



XI 
THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 



XI 

THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

THE housing problem is not solved when a 
tenement house law has been passed. Such 
laws are not self-operative. Housing evils 
will not vanish of their own accord. The causes 
which have led to them are too deep-rooted to 
permit anything so simple. In formulating hous- 
ing legislation, therefore, one must consider 
whether there exists administrative machinery 
adequate to carry it out. If not, new machinery 
must be created. 

In general it will be found that there is some 
branch of the local government entrusted with 
functions and duties bearing upon the proper 
housing of the people. In the larger cities there 
is a separate department of buildings, or depart- 
ment of public safety charged with responsibility 
for the inspection of new buildings, and the se- 
curity of old ones. In every community where 
there are any housing problems it is safe to as- 
sume that there will be found a board of health, 
or similar body. Between these two bodies is 
generally divided the responsibility for housing 
administration. Sometimes these branches of the 

123 



HOUSING REFORM 

government share this responsibility with others; 
often with the police department; sometimes 
where there is a separate fire department, with 
the fire department. 

It will invariably be found that such division of 
responsibility is unwise and leads to non-enforce- 
ment of law. In some cities the shifting of re- 
sponsibility from one branch of the city govern- 
ment to another has become a fine art. It is so 
much easier for a negligent clerk to advise an 
uninformed citizen that the particular matter he 
complains of is the duty of some other depart- 
ment, than it is to set the machinery of his own 
department in motion. The result to the citizen 
is unfortunate. No more potent discourager of 
civic enthusiasm can be found than this method 
of passing along the public-spirited citizen from 
one department to another. After he has visited 
three or four with regard to the same matter and 
finds each one giving him conflicting advice as to 
which branch of the city government is really 
entrusted with the functions in question, he 
begins to lose his interest in the matter and his 
desire to see things improved. It is the rare 
citizen that becomes aroused at this situation and 
fired with a desire to put an end to it. 

Wherever it is possible it is eminently wise 
to centre responsibility for the administration of 
housing laws. This principle, however, must not 
lead to imposing such duties upon departments 
that are not organized to carry out the work. 

124 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

Nor should it lead to the formation of new branches 
of the city government, with all their intricate 
mechanism, unless the conditions are so serious 
as to warrant such a step. 

In most cities it will be found the part of wisdom 
to place in the control of the bureau of buildings 
or similar body, the responsibility for the enforce- 
ment of those provisions of housing laws which 
deal with building construction and protection 
in case of fire: — such matters as thickness of walls, 
materials of which buildings shall be constructed, 
fireproofmg questions, the construction of stairs 
and of fire-escapes and similar matters. These 
questions relate only to buildings erected in the 
future. Beyond this the jurisdiction of the bureau 
of buildings should not go. 

All questions of a sanitary nature including light 
and ventilation, plumbing, water supply and simi- 
lar questions should be left to the health depart- 
ment as well as the vast work of regulating the 
maintenance of buildings of this kind. These 
are the functions which a health department may 
legitimately perform. 

With regard to regulating the maintenance of 
such houses, there will probably be no difference 
of opinion in any quarter. It will generally be 
found, however, that local building interests will 
prefer vesting in the department of buildings juris- 
diction over questions affecting light and venti- 
lation and plumbing construction in new build- 
ings, urging with considerable plausibility that all 

125 



HOUSING REFORM 

matters relating to new buildings should be lodged 
in such a department, leaving to the health de- 
partment the care and maintenance of buildings 
after they are once erected. 

This is plausible but not sound. The depart- 
ment which regulates use must control the details 
of construction which affect that use. A knowl- 
edge of the conditions gained in the constant 
daily dealing v/ith the problems involved, is 
a prerequisite to the application of the necessary 
remedies. 

A department which never has to deal with 
problems of light and ventilation after a build- 
ing is occupied, whose employees never become 
familiar with conditions of overcrowding, bad 
ventilation, lack of light, abuses of plumbing, 
lack of repair, conditions of dampness, &c., is 
not equipped to determine what standards shall 
be enforced in connection with the construc- 
tion of such buildings. One illustration suffices. 
The conditions of light in a building immediately 
after it is completed, when the plaster is new and 
white and there are no curtains or hangings at 
the windows, are totally different from what they 
are later. This was excellently illustrated in 
New York not many years ago, when the Super- 
intendent of Buildings, under examinatipn before a 
legislative Commission, gave it as his opinion that 
the discredited air-shaft — which had been aptly 
termed '*A culture tube on a gigantic scale" — 
was entirely adequate and satisfactory as the sole 

126 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

means of providing light and ventilation for ten 
out of fourteen rooms on every floor in each new 
tenement house that was being erected, notwith- 
standing the fact that such shafts were but 28 
inches wide and 60 feet long, 60 to 70 feet high, 
enclosed on all four sides, and without any intake 
of air at the bottom; and this in the face of the 
universal condemnation of this particular feature 
as a breeder of disease, a destroyer of morals and 
a menace in case of fire — an opinion shared unani- 
mously by health officials, fire department officials, 
the general public and the tenement house dweller. 

Building departments are generally closely al- 
lied to building interests. In nearly every city 
it is customary to put a builder at the head of 
such department; in rare cases an architect is 
appointed. In any event it will be found that 
building departments are invariably sensitive to 
building interests and are apt to consider the 
questions that arise in connection with the en- 
forcement of housing laws more from the point 
of view of those interests than from the point of 
view of the welfare of the future occupants and 
of the community. 

Health departments, on the other hand, are not 
subject to such influences. They are generally 
presided over by sanitarians. Their chief object 
is to save life, to prevent disease and to reduce the 
death rate. They are not likely to tolerate in new 
buildings the perpetuation of evils which in a few 
years will greatly increase their own burdens and 

127 



HOUSING REFORM 

render difficult the carrying out of their chief 
functions. 

For all of these reasons, therefore, jurisdiction 
over the enforcement of provisions aflfecting light 
and ventilation, regulating the sizes of yards, 
courts and other open spaces; the size of rooms, 
the methods of ventilation of halls, stairs, cellars 
and water-closet compartments; the installation 
of sanitary plumbing and modern appliances, is 
wisely placed in the hands of health officers. 

In New York City the main functions affecting 
tenement houses, normally exercised by building 
and health departments, have been placed in one 
centralized department of the city government, 
known as the Tenement House Department. 
This has been made necessary by reason of the 
extraordinary conditions which there exist, to 
which allusion has already been made in this book. 
The test of whether it is necessary to establish a 
separate tenement house department in other 
cities is the number of tenement houses and the 
size of the tenement house population. In gen- 
eral it is safe to say that no city needs to form 
a separate branch of the city government for this 
purpose, unless it has 25,000 or more tenement 
houses. 

This does not mean that it may not often be 
desirable to create a tenement house bureau in 
the board of health. Where there is a consider- 
able number of tenement houses, the concentra- 
tion of the work relating to the maintenance of 

128 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

buildings in one such bureau tends to greater 
efficiency of administration. 

Adequate inspection is the keynote of successful 
administration. Without knowledge of the exact 
conditions it is hopeless to attempt to apply rem- 
edies. That knowledge can not be gained except 
by inspection. There are no formulas which can 
be applied wholesale. Each house must be treated 
on its own merits. Each case presents its own 
problem. 

The difficulties in the way of achieving adequate 
inspection are great. In the first place one must 
secure competent inspectors. But, alas, they 
are difficult to get and to keep. Frequently 
incompetent inspectors are foisted upon the com- 
munity for political reasons. Even at the best, 
one's choice is limited to men who have shown 
proficiency in a civil service examination but 
concerning whose judgment and general ability 
the appointing officer knows nothing. One hesi- 
tates to determine which is the worse horn of the 
dilemma. The political appointee often turns out 
to be in time a competent, and frequently a 
practical man. The civil service employee fre- 
quently turns out to be neither. Generally both 
classes of employees have to be taught their 
business at the city's expense. Too frequently, 
just when a municipal officer has succeeded in 
bringing his employees to a state of experience 
and ability where they are of real service to the 
city, he is compelled to lose them because of his 
9 129 



HOUSING REFORM 

inability to fittingly reward their increasingly 
valuable services. 

One way to secure good inspectors is to appoint 
women. This of course presupposes an adminis- 
tration free from politics. There are several ad- 
vantages in using women for sanitary inspection 
work. In the first place for the salary paid, one 
can generally obtain a woman of higher capacity. 
This insures a greater degree of intelligence and 
skill, a greater interest in the work, more zeal, 
often a personal desire to improve conditions and 
greater loyalty to the department. With women 
there is less necessity for discipline and greater 
permanency in the department's staff. 

The disadvantages of women inspectors are their 
lack of practical knowledge; except in rare in- 
stances, they can not be used for the inspection 
of new buildings or for structural matters; as 
a rule they do not turn out quite as large a volume 
of work as the men, though it is generally of better 
quality. On the whole they make very efficient 
sanitary inspectors. Every health department 
that has any considerable amount of sanitary 
inspection to do should have several women 
inspectors on its staff. 

Adequate inspection is essential, but it is not 
the only thing. While the eyes of the Department 
must be able to see clearly and to report accurately 
what they see, the guiding intelligence must so 
manage and conduct its affairs as to bring about 
a fair and impartial enforcement of the law. 

130 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

There must be unlimited backbone, a readiness to 
insist upon strict enforcement when such enforce- 
ment is essential, but also there must be the 
discernment that will recognize the necessity at 
times of other than a rigid enforcement of the 
law — especially in relation to the older buildings — 
and that will adapt itself to varying conditions. 

The enforcement of housing laws with regard 
to new buildings presents very different problems 
from the enforcement of similar laws in connection 
with the maintenance of buildings. The main 
difference is in the speed with which such enforce- 
ment must be brought about. It may do no 
serious harm to permit violations in the older 
houses to drag on for several months. Such a 
course of procedure, however, in new buildings 
is fatal. During the delay, the building is com- 
pleted. It will do little good to the future occu- 
pants of a house built contrary to law to collect 
a fine from the owner. The number of fmes 
collected in such cases is not an evidence of the 
department's efficiency, but an indictment of its 
methods. 

To illustrate: If the law requires that a yard 
of 20 feet in depth shall be left at the rear of a new 
building and the builder leaves but 14 feet — thus 
decreasing the amount of light and air available for 
the tenants — there is no way that such defect 
can be remedied after the building is completed, 
short of tearing down the entire rear wall at great 
expense and difficulty. Similarly if the law 

131 



HOUSING REFORM 

requires that a court shall be 12 feet wide and the 
builder builds it 10 feet — thus decreasing the 
light and ventilation of the rooms opening upon 
it — there is no way of remedying this defect after 
the building is once completed without practically 
destroying the building. Judges are very loath 
to order such drastic changes, nor should it be 
necessary. 

The proper method is to see to it that such facts 
are discovered while the building is being erected, 
before it has progressed too far and then insist 
that the builder shall rectify the errors before 
going ahead further with his work. The best 
way to bring this about is by a method which has 
been put into practice in the New York Tenement 
House Department. When such defects are dis- 
covered builders are notified to remedy them im- 
mediately and failing this, are compelled to stop 
all further work on their building. At first, 
because of the old lax ways which had been in 
vogue, they did not believe that the department 
was in earnest, and when ordered to stop building 
proceeded with all the more haste to complete the 
work. When, however, they found several police- 
men at the job with instructions to arrest every- 
body that touched a brick, the whole situation 
assumed a new aspect. It did not require more 
than two or three such occurrences to bring it 
home to the builders of that city that the day had 
passed when they could with impunity defy the 
law. They have at last learned their lesson and 

132 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

know that the tenement houses that they now 
build must in all essential particulars comply 
with the law. Where a department fmds any 
difficulty in stopping the progress of such work, 
it should be given the right to invoke the aid of 
the courts through injunction proceedings. 

Another important method of securing the 
proper construction of new buildings has been the 
plan of requiring that after a new tenement is 
completed and before it can be legally occupied a 
certificate shall be issued by the enforcing author- 
ities to the effect that it complies in all respects 
with the law. This has been one of the most 
important provisions of the New York law and 
has done much to make for improved housing 
conditions. Under its operation builders have 
learned that there is little advantage in attempting 
to evade the law because, even though they may 
succeed for a while, (often through the connivance 
of corrupt inspectors) in utilizing forbidden meth- 
ods of building construction, they find that it 
in no way benefits them in the end because they 
are confronted with this nightmare of a final 
certificate, with a knowledge that their house must 
be finally examined by a different inspector and 
that every violation of law which can be seen 
(and most of them cannot be covered up) will 
then be disclosed and a certificate refused. 

Most buildings, too, are at the present day built 
on borrowed money through the system of building 
loans, and the men who lend that money wisely 

133 



HOUSING REFORM 

refuse to make their final payments until they are 
assured through the agency of the department's 
fmal certificate that the building in question is 
lawful. In the old days, before such a provision 
existed, it was the common practice to run up 
tenement houses contrary to law and fill them with 
tenants — sometimes even before the stairs of the 
building were completed. 

The problems involved in the proper main- 
tenance of the homes of the poor are very great. 
In most communities little eifort is made to dis- 
cover housing evils or other sanitary evils upon 
the initiative of the sanitary authorities. As a 
rule they are quite content — often necessarily so 
because of the limited funds at their command — 
to await the complaints of citizens, believing that 
if there are serious sanitary evils they will be thus 
called to their attention. 

This is a slipshod, antiquated practice and can 
not be dignified as a method of inspection. It is 
a very unfortunate practice. It means discrimi- 
nation. It means that one property owner whose 
house is in a fairly good condition is required by 
the health officers to expend money and do con- 
siderable work while his neighbor in the next 
street whose house is in a far worse condition, is 
not bothered from year's end to year's end, simply 
because he has a different class of tenants who 
have not cared to send complaints to the local 
authorities. 

1 1 also means neglect. 1 1 means that unsanitary 
134 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

conditions, often far worse than those that are 
complained of and dealt with by the Department, 
remain for months unknown and unchecked. 
Besides, the practice of sending complaints is 
fraught with danger to the tenants and is dis- 
couraged in every way possible by the landlord 
and often by municipal employees. That land- 
lords should seek to discourage such complaints 
does not require comment. Many adopt the 
practice of evicting those tenants who send com- 
plaints to the local health officers. As most 
tenants hold their apartments on monthly leases 
this is always feasible on the first of the month. 
It is a system which uniformly accomplishes the 
results desired. A tenant who has had this ex- 
perience once or twice soon loses his zest for civic 
reform. 

Clerks and other employees in city departments 
lend their aid to the accomplishment of the same 
end, reasoning that the more they can discourage 
complaints the less work they will have to do. 
Moreover, the average tenement house dweller 
does not understand the intricacies of the processes 
which must be employed and the legal delays 
involved in bringing recalcitrant owners to book. 
Finding no attention paid to his complaints so far 
as he can see — not realizing that it often takes 
months for the department to bring about a change 
in the conditions complained of — he becomes pessi- 
mistic and ceases to send complaints, and the 
belief thus comes to be general that there is little 

^35 



HOUSING REFORM 

use of taking up such matters, and that the ordi- 
nary citizen has little chance of having his com- 
plaints attended to unless he has influence behind 
him. 

There should be substituted for inspection on 
complaint, periodic sanitary inspection of all 
houses upon the initiative of the enforcing authori- 
ties, regularly at definite times. This is the only 
method of sanitary inspection which is worthy 
the name of a system. To substitute this entirely 
for inspection on complaint should be the aim of 
every sanitary officer. It is the ideal towards 
which all should work, and it is to be hoped that 
the time is not far distant when sanitary officials 
may be able to disregard entirely the numerous 
citizens' complaints that come to them and trust 
completely to periodic inspection to disclose all 
evils of a serious nature. 

In crowded cities where there is a vast tenement 
house population the ideal is to have such in- 
spections made once a month. It will be many 
years before that ideal is reached. The practica- 
ble plan in most cities is three times a year; and 
this, with such re-inspections as would necessarily 
be made to ascertain whether orders have been 
carried out, should suffice in most communities. 
Uniformity of treatment of owners is thus accom- 
plished. The discovery of serious sanitary abuses 
is no longer left to chance nor to the caprice or ill 
feeling of some malicious tenant. 

One of the most important powers to be exer- 
136 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

cised by any health board is the right to vacate 
houses that are unfit for human habitation. This 
is very different from the right to condemn or 
destroy property. It is a perfectly clear proposi- 
tion that if a house, whether it be a tenement or 
dwelling, is unfit for human habitation it should 
not be occupied by human beings. And it should 
be within the power of the responsible governing 
officers to accomplish this. There should be no 
opportunity in such extreme cases of unending 
delays and long drawn out contests in the courts. 
Where conditions exist that are perpetuating ill- 
ness, creating disease and death, and weakening 
the social and moral fibre of the community, it is 
the paramount duty of the community to put an 
end to them without delay. 

And yet there are very few American cities 
whose health officers possess this important power. 
New York has possessed it for many years. There 
both the health commissioner and — in the case of 
tenement houses — the tenement house commis- 
sioner have the power without application to the 
courts, when a building is unfit for human habita- 
tion, after a notice to the owner, to order the house 
to be vacated within a short period of time, 
generally three to five days. Should the owner 
fail to comply with such orders the departments 
in question then have the right to send their own 
police officers to the buildings and forcibly and 
bodily eject the tenants. This is done practically 
every week in the year in the City of New York. 

137 



HOUSING REFORM 

In the year 1908 the Tenement House Department 
of that city vacated 76 houses for this reason. 
Seldom are these powers contested in court. 

The great advantage of this method of procedure 
is that people immediately cease to live under 
improper conditions. It also spurs the landlord 
to vigorous action in seeking to meet the depart- 
ment's orders. As long as his house is unoccupied 
he is losing money, as no rents are being paid; 
and, as he cannot put tenants back into his build- 
ing until the conditions have been remedied, he 
fmds it advantageous to comply speedily with the 
department's requirements. 

Every American city should give to its health 
officers such powers. Being extreme powers they 
should be exercised only in extreme cases. 

The legal equipment of the department is a 
vital adjunct of every sanitary officer. In many 
cities the weakness of this is a serious handicap to 
housing reform. In only a few are there to be 
found special counsel assigned to boards of health 
for this purpose. Generally they have to rely 
upon the city attorney or corporation counsel 
who performs similar functions for all the other 
branches of the city government and who neces- 
sarily, with a limited staif, can give only a small 
portion of his time and attention to the prosecution 
of violations of the health laws. 

Wherever there are many tenement houses it 
will be found advisable for the health department 
to have its own counsel with an adequate staff. In 

138 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

the last analysis, the strength of the department 
will depend very largely upon the strength of its 
legal end. Where owners refuse to comply with 
the law, the only way in which compliance can be 
brought about is through the bringing of suits. In 
some cities unwilling owners are persuaded to 
comply, through persistent letter-writing on the 
part of the health officers. The disadvantage of 
this method is that it is generally slow. Owners 
who do not wish to maintain their houses in proper 
condition soon realize that such letters are not 
of serious consequence and gradually adopt the 
practice of promising to comply so as to gain time. 
By this means it is often possible for them to 
protract negotiations several months before the 
matter is taken up by the department's attorney. 

Better than an attorney in many cases is an 
expert photographer on the department's staff. 
This idea was first developed in the administration 
of the Tenement House Department in New York. 
Up to that time photographs had not played any 
considerable part in the administration of sanitary 
or housing laws. One good photograph may often 
accomplish as much as a lawsuit. Nothing will 
bring an owner so quickly to terms as the sight 
of a series of photographs of the conditions in his 
house. 

Some of the most interesting experiences I have 
ever had have been the encounters with tene- 
ment house owners who have entered my office 
protesting that the orders issued against their 

139 



HOUSING REFORM 

property were without basis, insisting that the 
inspectors of the department must be very incom- 
petent and that serious injustice had been done; 
vehemently asserting that their buildings were 
always kept in an entirely sanitary condition and 
that the conditions complained of in the inspec- 
tors' reports could not have existed. 

After listening to these remarks without com- 
ment, there was always considerable pleasure in 
placing before their astonished eyes five or six pho- 
tographs showing indescribably bad conditions and 
saying quietly that these were photographs of the 
conditions that existed at the building in question. 
It was seldom necessary for the owner to take a 
second glance at the pictures. He generally at 
once terminated the interview with the statement 
that he had no idea that such conditions existed 
(which in some cases was true) and left the oifice 
with a promise to remedy them immediately. 

The great advantage of the photograph is not 
only that it is a true record of conditions which 
exist at a given time, but that the owner of the 
house knows that the department has in its posses- 
sion evidence which if taken into court he could 
not successfully refute. 1 1 is only in rare instances 
that any owner attempts to contest the depart- 
ment's orders in the face of such evidence. 

Two kinds of legal process are available: Civil 
and criminal. The former is the one most gener- 
ally used. It consists chiefly in the institution, 
in minor courts, of actions for small penalties; 

140 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

in similar actions in branches of the Supreme 
Court for larger sums; in proceedings for the 
vacation of premises unfit for human habitation; 
in suits for the abatement of nuisances, and in 
injunction proceedings where it is necessary to 
prevent owners from carrying certain plans into 
effect which would result in harm to the com- 
munity. In some cases also in proceedings to 
compel owners to carry out the department's 
orders and for the collection of moneys expended 
by the department in carrying out orders which 
owners have refused to comply with. 

In very few cities have criminal proceedings 
been resorted to, although in many the department 
of health possesses this power; in most places 
violations of health laws are misdemeanors. A 
greater use of the criminal remedies would un- 
doubtedly result in a prompter compliance with 
the law in most cases. Few owners mind very 
much being sued in a minor court for a penalty 
of $25 or I50, but most owners seriously object 
to being arrested, put in jail, admitted to bail 
and tried by criminal process. Of course this 
should be resorted to only in serious cases. It 
is a power which it is dangerous to abuse. 

Health departments should also have the power 
where an owner has refused or neglected for some 
time to carry out important orders, to step in 
themselves, if need be, and do the work at the 
city's expense, with the right to impose this cost 
as a lien upon the property. From very early 

141 



HOUSING REFORM 

days such a power has been enjoyed by the health 
officials of New York. In recent years they have 
not had to exercise it frequently. 

If such powers are given, care should be taken 
to provide at the same time for a fund out of 
which such expenses can be defrayed, otherwise 
the department will be effectually stopped from ac- 
complishing much in this direction. Allusion has 
already been made in this chapter to the impor- 
tance of giving to health departments the right to 
vacate houses that are unfit for human habitation. 
This power should be extended to cases where 
houses are without fire-escapes and human life is 
endangered thereby. 

An important adjunct to the legal powers of 
the department is the right to file a lis pendens 
(notice of suit pending) in the case of violations of 
housing, health and building laws where the owners 
have failed to comply with reasonable diligence, 
and the enforcing authorities contemplate bring- 
ing an action. This course of procedure is very 
effective as it serves notice to real estate inter- 
ests and lawyers that there is something the mat- 
ter with the house and prevents an owner from 
unloading the property upon some innocent pur- 
chaser who has not suspected that there may 
be violations pending, the removal of which will 
require the expenditure of considerable money. 
All penalties incurred through violation of housing 
laws should be made liens upon the property. 

There is little value in any of these powers or 
142 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

in housing laws themselves if there is not a well 
developed public sentiment in each community 
to sustain them. A particularly disheartening 
experience is, after weeks of preparation of a suit 
and possibly after months of effort by the local 
officials to secure the remedy of some abuse, to 
have finally the whole matter summarily dis- 
missed by some minor judge when the case is 
taken into court, with a refusal on his part to 
hold the owner or to impose upon him the proper 
penalty, notwithstanding the trouble and expense 
to which the community has been put and the 
evils which the unfortunate tenants have had to 
suffer for a long period of time. This is too fre- 
quently the case. 

There is often an entire lack of appreciation on 
the part of the judges in minor courts of the im- 
portance of housing laws and the necessity of their 
supporting public officials in their work. So great 
a drawback has this become in one eastern city 
that the authorities have finally been compelled to 
a very large extent to withdraw their suits from 
these courts and bring proceedings in branches of 
the Supreme Court itself. 

The time is probably soon coming when we 
shall establish in most of our cities special courts 
in which all suits brought on the part of the mu- 
nicipality or the state will be prosecuted — that is, 
a true municipal court: a place where actions 
affecting the municipality solely may be tried. 
Such a plan would possess great advantages. It 

143 



HOUSING REFORM 

would mean that the judges of such courts would 
thus become familiar with the intricacies of laws 
that are often highly technical and complicated, 
and would through the constant determination of 
such issues be able to enforce standards that would 
raise the entire tone of the municipal adminis- 
tration. 

Another practice which renders difficult the 
enforcement of health laws is the failure on the 
part of the prosecuting officers to collect penalties 
when once imposed. All the various steps may 
have been taken, weeks have been consumed in 
the preparation of a case, issue has been joined, 
decision rendered in favor of the municipality, a 
penalty imposed upon the offending owner and 
then the attorney for the city makes no effort to 
collect the penalty. 

The effect of this policy has been reflected in 
the attitude of the courts, voiced in the sentiment 
frequently expressed by many of the judges that it 
is not their function to serve as collectors of reve- 
nue for the city — meaning that they will not im- 
pose penalties where owners have promised to 
comply, even though that promise has only been 
wrung out of them in court after many months' 
delay. Such an attitude seriously hampers proper 
enforcement. 

The centering in one department of responsi- 
bility for the enforcement of specific provisions 
of law is no more important than the centering 
upon the owner of the responsibility for all un- 

144 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

sanitary or dangerous conditions. To the ordi- 
nary person it seems perhaps fair that tenants 
and lessees should share with owners the respon- 
sibility for unsanitary conditions. 

Such a scheme, however, is impossible from an 
administrative point of view, especially where the 
chief method of enforcement is by means of civil 
proceedings. If you are going to sue a man he 
must have some property upon which you can 
levy in the event of your securing a judgment. 
Imagine the unprofitableness of the city's spend- 
ing time and money in suing some irresponsible 
tenant from whom a judgment could not be col- 
lected. The owner is really the responsible per- 
son. It is his business and duty to see that his 
house is kept in proper condition. 

This is a question which has given great concern 
to tenement house owners. They have always 
pointed to the fact that the owner is made respon- 
sible for all violations of law as a great injustice, 
and have with apparent reason inquired why 
penalties have not been imposed equally upon 
tenants. Of course, there are cases where the 
apartments of individual tenants are kept in a 
filthy condition and the property is shamefully 
abused. If a landlord has taken in tenants who 
abuse his house and refuse to comply with the 
laws of health, it is an entirely easy matter to 
turn them out. 

In the great majority of cases, however, the ten- 
ants are law-abiding people who keep their apart- 

lo 145 



HOUSING REFORM 

ments in excellent condition. It is the public 
parts of the tenement house that are generally in 
trouble. Over these the owner is the only person 
who has control. The task of a city department 
which had to hold twenty different families respon- 
sible for the cleanliness of a public hallway or the 
repair of a public water-closet, would indeed be an 
impossible one. In the long run it will be found 
that no hardship is worked upon owners by hold- 
ing them to strict accountability for the care of 
their premises. 

The only instance with which I am familiar 
where housing laws do seek to place penalties 
upon tenants is in regard to the placing of en- 
cumbrances on fire-escape balconies. In this 
case the tenant is made liable to a fme of |io for 
each offense and also liable to arrest. Even this 
provision, designed for the protection of the 
tenants themselves, does not work well. Few 
judges are willing to make criminals of ignorant 
foreigners, who, unfamiliar with our customs and 
laws, have placed some household utensil or put 
their bedding to air upon the fire-escape balconies. 

Essential to the efficient administration of a 
housing law is the registration of the name and 
address of tenement owners. A plan originally 
tried in New York some years ago was to require 
the name and address of the owner of the tenement 
house to be posted in a conspicuous place in the 
public hallway. This was not a success. 

The plan at present in vogue is the requirement 
146 



THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 

that every owner shall register his name and ad- 
dress in the Tenement House Department, with the 
further provision that if he fails to do so, service of 
all legal papers shall be deemed adequate by merely 
nailing copies of 'such papers upon the door of 
the building. Without such information sanitary 
abuses of a serious nature are often permitted to 
exist for long periods because of the inability of the 
authorities to place responsibility. 

Co-operation is an important element in housing 
reform. To get the best results there should be 
the fullest co-operation between the city depart- 
ments themselves and with civic bodies and private 
citizens interested in the improvement of living 
conditions. 

Politics should of course be kept out of city 
departments charged with the enforcement of 
sanitary laws. No matter what one may believe 
with regard to other branches of the city govern- 
ment, there is generally a well crystallized senti- 
ment that the department of health should not 
be made the sport of politicians. This is a propo- 
sition about which there can be no question. 
Fortunately politicians are gradually learning that 
there is nothing more dangerous to tamper with 
than the health of the people and increasingly 
each year health departments are being freed from 
these influences. 

Where politics does enter into the administra- 
tion of housing laws, there is considerable that 
can be accomplished even through the politician. 
He can be made to see that the enforcement of 

147 



HOUSING REFORM 

laws in the interest of the poorer members of the 
community is a poHtical asset and that there is 
more to be gained politically by taking this side 
of the question than in urging the suspension of 
special requirements in the interest of individual 
constituents. 

The average politician, seeking favors from the 
head of a city department, cares very little 
whether the municipal officer grants his request 
and he secures the extension of time or modifi- 
cation of some order that may be desired. All 
that he generally wants is to show the member 
of his district who has come to him for help, that 
his request has been heeded and that the enforcing 
authorities have done what they could to do him 
a favor. This may be tactfully accomplished 
without in any way sacrificing the welfare of the 
community. Like everything else, it depends 
very much on the way in which it is done. 

Efficient housing administration to be successful 
must be sane. There must be a sense of propor- 
tion on the part of the head of the department. 
He must not give his attention unduly to matters 
of minor moment, especially when large questions 
and serious evils are put aside. He must not too 
rigidly adhere to the strict letter of the law nor 
feel that he can never deviate from it in the slight- 
est respect. On the other hand there must not 
be so liberal an interpretation as to nullify its 
intent. In general, sanitary officers should attack 
the worst evils first and so proceed as to bring 
about a uniform treatment of citizens. 

148 



XII 

HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 



XII 
HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

HOUSING reformers are often in doubt 
whether it is better to seek state legislation 
or to attempt to remedy conditions through 
municipal ordinance. The latter is easier, but is 
less likely to give satisfactory results. The chief 
advantage of state legislation is its greater degree 
of permanency. In many states the legislature 
meets but once in two years. Moreover, it 
generally takes two or three months to get im- 
portant legislation passed. The result is that 
when you have once obtained your law you have, 
to a large extent, ensured its stability. The law 
once obtained cannot be repealed or amended in 
important particulars without the public knowing 
it; nor can it be done quickly. One has, there- 
fore, ample time to muster his forces to repel 
attacks that may be made. 

On the other hand, if you enact a municipal 
ordinance it is subject to constant change. Few 
communities pay close attention to the work of 
their Common Council, and matters slip through 
easily. Local boards are generally in session 
throughout the year. Almost any week they can 

151 



HOUSING REFORM 

put through a radical amendment to a housing 
ordinance before its friends have time to rally to 
its defense. 

It will be found, too, that the aldermen are 
much more susceptible to local influences. Some 
builder will find a provision of the housing ordi- 
nance in his way when he wants to build a flat 
or apartment house, and will get his alderman 
to introduce an amendment making an exception 
in the case of his building or even changing 
altogether the particular provision. It is difficult 
to combat successfully amendments of this kind 
in the short time at one's disposal, even if aware 
of them, and gradually the ordinance is broken 
down in its essential provisions and becomes of 
little force and effect. 

This is less likely to happen in state legislation. 
The members of the legislature are not so sensi- 
tive to local influence. Only a few of them come 
from a particular city. The others freed from 
local pressure are apt to consider the proposal to 
weaken a beneficent law of this kind, with refer- 
ence to the general welfare of the state, and the 
member desiring such changes will find himself 
unable to accomplish them. 

There is also some doubt as to the power of local 
municipal bodies, such as boards of aldermen, to 
prescribe legal remedies for the violation of housing 
ordinances that will be sufficiently strong. In 
addition there is always the question of conflict 
between a local ordinance and laws that may be 

152 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

enacted at some future time by the state legisla- 
ture. In such cases the state law will always have 
the greater force and effect, and it is therefore 
the part of wisdom to start upon this basis. 

For all of these reasons it is wiser to seek the 
remedy for housing conditions through legislative 
enactment rather than through municipal ordi- 
nance. 

Usually the first efforts at securing legislation 
for housing reform fail. The community where 
this experience is not repeated year after year is 
fortunate. The reasons for the failures are not 
far to seek. The persons interested in such 
movements are, as a rule, unfamiliar with the 
factors which enter into success in this field or are 
unwilling to address themselves in a practical 
way to the problems which have to be met. 

In the first place public sentiment is an essen- 
tial factor. We talk very glibly of methods of 
government in this country and of our governing 
officials, whereas we all know or should know that 
the real governing force is the force of public 
sentiment. Public sentiment is a vague and illu- 
sive thing, working often in inscrutable ways. 
Fortunately it is nearly always on the side of 
movements for the improvement of social con- 
ditions, notably for housing reform. The effort 
to direct it into proper channels should not be 
difficult, if undertaken with a knowledge of what 
is requisite and with a definite end in view. 

The most potent factor in this situation is the 
153 



HOUSING REFORM 

press. It is useless to attempt a legislative cam- 
paign of any importance until the support of the 
press has been obtained. To get this, let the man- 
aging editors and others responsible for the for- 
mulation of a newspaper's policy understand the 
conditions which exist and let them see them at 
first hand. The knowledge thus gained will be 
found to be of lasting value. 

Editors are, as a rule, very practical men. 
They must be assured that the movement which 
you advocate is on a sound basis and in the hands 
of practical people. Be assured that the argu- 
ments you advance will be offset at various times 
in all manner of ways and through all sorts of 
channels by counter arguments to the effect that 
your plans are ''visionary" and ''theoretical," and 
will not benefit the people whom you seek to 
benefit, but on the contrary may work irreparable 
hardship to property interests that are affected 
thereby. 

These are arguments that are sure to be ad- 
vanced and arguments that the housing reformer 
must be able to meet and satisfactorily dispose of. 
No attempt to secure housing legislation should 
be made until the community has been informed 
with regard to the conditions which prevail and a 
strong public sentiment for their abolition de- 
veloped. 

In what other ways can public sentiment be 
developed besides through the press? The method 
that generally produces the largest and quickest 

154 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

returns is through circularization in various forms, 
through writing letters from time to time to 
prominent citizens calKng their attention to evils 
which exist in the community, and always direct- 
ing the letter to some specific question concerning 
which you desire to awaken their interest and to 
secure their support. The indefinite letter is of 
little value — in fact, is likely to weaken your influ- 
ence and injure your cause. 

Popular lectures, if given by interesting speak- 
ers, also play an important part in the education 
of the community and the development of public 
sentiment. Lantern slides showing the actual 
conditions that exist are a potent aid in this work. 
The distribution of photographic reproductions of 
some of the worst evils, as well as typical instances 
of conditions that your investigation has disclosed, 
attaching to them always a human interest where 
possible, is always effective in reaching people's 
sympathies and securing their support, because it 
enables them to picture actual conditions. This 
is important, as many people lack imagination. 
One good photograph is worth six pages of print, 
but it must tell the story and you must be sure 
that it tells the story. 

Enlisting the labor men in the cause, where the 
labor movement is strong and progressive, is 
nearly always helpful. Housing reform is a 
matter that vitally concerns them. They who 
have been engaged for generations in the fight 
for better working conditions for themselves are 

155 



HOUSING REFORM 

quick to rally in support of an appeal for better 
living conditions for their wives and families. 
It inspires confidence in their own cause for them 
to enlist in a disinterested campaign, and their 
leaders are quick to see the advantage of such co- 
operation. The labor men, moreover, bring great 
strength to any movement for housing reform 
because of the attention which legislators give to 
the demands of labor. 

The most direct and natural source of appeal is 
to the members of boards of charitable societies 
and to citizens interested in other forms of social 
work. Their connection with such work indicates 
an interest in the cause — an interest which, as a 
rule, needs only to be developed and directed. 
Women's clubs, civic organizations, settlements 
and kindred bodies may be made potent allies. 
Do not, however, surrender the leadership of 
your cause into their hands. 

In general, one's task is not so much to create 
public sentiment as to direct it: to fully inform 
the public as to the conditions, to formulate the 
remedies and present them for public judgment 
and approval, and to direct the great force of 
public sentiment towards securing the reforms 
that are urgently needed. 

It is a common experience for a community to 
be aroused to housing evils, to have had a care- 
fully selected citizens' committee at work making 
careful investigations and studies of the problem 
for a year or two, to have prepared a housing law 

156 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

after the most careful and mature deliberation 
extending over many months, and then to utterly 
fail to secure the enactment of its measures by the 
legislature. It is a disheartening experience and 
it frequently acts as a check to housing progress. 
What is the reason for it? The chief reason lies 
in the fact that legislative success requires special 
abilities. 

The ordinary citizen would never for a moment 
dream of conducting a complicated lawsuit if not 
a lawyer; nor would he feel confidence in his 
ability to perform some delicate surgical opera- 
tion if not a surgeon. Getting an important bill 
through a legislature in the face of great opposi- 
tion is quite as diificult a task and requires special 
knowledge; yet frequently the ordinary citizen 
undertakes this task with cheerful confidence and, 
as a rule, without the slightest appreciation of 
what he is about to experience. From an educa- 
tional point of view it is perhaps advantageous 
that he should adopt this course, but its effect 
on the cause of housing reform is uniformly 
unfortunate. 

It is only in rare cases that the ordinary citi- 
zen is keen enough to grasp quickly the essential 
principles of the game and adapt himself to them. 
He comes to the experiment totally unprepared 
for his task, handicapped as a rule by text-book 
views of government, not realizing that, as a rule, 
the actual methods are as different from the 
theoretical ones as day from night. It is difficult 

157 



HOUSING REFORM 

for the average man to adjust himself to this 
situation with sufficient readiness. It is incred- 
ible to him that the views which he has enter- 
tained for so long a time should be erroneous. 
How can it be? He has heard little from others 
indicating that the real methods of government 
are so different from the ones commonly accepted 
as prevailing. In the legislative experience he 
learns for the first time that a good cause may be 
a handicap; that it is often easier to pass a bill 
which works injury to the community than one 
which improves conditions; that the bill which 
benefits everybody is far more difficult to pass 
than the bill which benefits a single individual or 
corporation. 

He also has radically to readjust his ideas in 
other directions. In most legislatures he is bound 
to find that the real determination of what bills 
shall pass and what bills shall fail often rests 
with some single individual — the political boss, 
a man responsible to no one, holding no office and 
yet shaping and controlling the destinies of the 
state. Sometimes he will find a group of bosses 
rather than a single one. At first the ordinary 
good citizen will be horrified at such conditions. 
It is so violent a contrast to all that he had 
learned in earlier years as to methods of govern- 
ment, so violent a shock to his ideals. 

From the point of view of housing reform, how- 
ever, such conditions are often a distinct help 
rather than a hindrance. The boss is always 

158 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

amenable to public sentiment, and the advantage 
which corporations and special interests fmd in the 
boss system may without reproach be turned to 
account by the reformer. The great advantage is 
that it is much easier to convince one man with 
regard to so highly technical a subject as housing 
legislation than it is to convince two hundred — 
two hundred of all degrees of intelligence and 
integrity. 

Of course there is another side to it. It is easier 
also for those interests which may be opposed to 
housing reform to influence the boss than it is for 
them to influence two hundred members of the 
legislature. But admitting all of this, the fact 
still remains that the existing political conditions, 
much as they are to be regretted from many points 
of view, lend themselves most advantageously to 
the securing of progressive legislation, not only in 
the field of housing reform but in other fields of 
social effort. 

The trouble with many social reformers has 
been that they have not been willing to take 
advantage of the situation as they fmd it, and 
direct this force into useful channels, but have 
held aloof and refused to face conditions as they 
are. 

If you are trying to get housing legislation 
through a legislature which is controlled by a boss, 
what a futile waste of time it is to seek out the one 
hundred or two hundred members of that body 
and go through the empty formality of attempting 

159 



HOUSING REFORM 

to secure the individual support of each one of 
those men as if he really controlled the destinies 
of the cause in which you are interested. The 
influence that you want is the influence which 
can affect your cause favorably. If you live in a 
boss-ridden state it is just as futile to ask the 
support of individual members of the legislature 
in that state as to ask the aid of the Mikado of 
Japan. Without the support of the boss all other 
support is of little value. 

The mistake that is too often made is in assum- 
ing that the boss, because he has an unsavory 
reputation politically, has ceased to be a human 
being — in assuming that he is the enemy of all 
good things and that you can not count upon his 
help in the particular reforms in which you are 
interested. The direct opposite is generally the 
case. The political leader is very keen to welcome 
opportunities of playing a helpful part in progres- 
sive social movements, especially in a cause which 
does not affect his personal interests and which, 
as a rule, will be a source of political capital and 
incidentally secure for him the commendation of 
public-spirited citizens. He always has his ear 
to the ground. But he is human also in this — 
if he has the power, he wants to be consulted. 
And it is generally better to consult people in 
advance than afterward. 

Boss-ridden or not boss-ridden, the secret of 
legislative success may be summed up as the right 
pressure, in the right place, at the right time, in 

160 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

the right way, by the right person. No one of 
these things can be omitted. 

It must be the right pressure. If you want to 
influence a member from a certain county there 
is little use in asking people who live in a totally 
different county and who are not his constituents 
to use their influence with him. But there is 
every use in letting him understand the sentiment 
of the people in his own district. That is the right 
pressure. 

The pressure to be effective must also be in the 
right place: All legislatures do their work by 
committee system. In practically all of them, 
bills when introduced are uniformly referred to 
committees for consideration and for the hearing 
of the arguments for and against each measure. 
When a bill is in committee and having the con- 
sideration of the ten or fifteen members who may 
constitute that committee, there is little use in 
bringing pressure to bear upon the general mem- 
bers of the legislature who are not members of 
that committee. They will give little or no atten- 
tion to any matter until it comes before them on 
the floor of the house after having been considered 
by committee and reported favorably or unfavor- 
ably from them; but pressure brought upon the 
members of that particular committee by which 
your bill is being considered is of the very greatest 
value. That is pressure in the right place. 

It must also be at the right time. If you are 
anxious to have your bill reported out of committee 
" i6i 



HOUSING REFORM 

and your committee holds its meetings on Friday, 
it is not advantageous to personally interview the 
members of that committee on Monday and urge 
them to vote in favor of your measure. 

If a bill has been reported by a committee and 
is up for consideration in one house there is little 
use in seeking to influence the members of the 
other house which is not then considering the 
measure in question and which can not, in the 
nature of things, consider it until some time later. 
The pressure must be at the right time. 

It also must be in the right way. Probably the 
most futile thing that the average citizen does 
and the method which he instinctively adopts is 
to get up a petition of thousands of names in favor 
of his measure and send it to the legislature. This 
is a relic of a pre-glacial political period. Such 
methods never influence legislators; they know 
how easy it is to get signatures to petitions and 
how the American people are prone to sign un- 
thinkingly almost any statement that is put before 
them. They are quite right to pay no attention 
to such alleged expressions of public sentiment, 
because they represent nothing. The pressure 
must be in the right way. 

Letters, however, from constituents and espe- 
cially from prominent members of the community 
to their own representatives, are of value, espe- 
cially letters which indicate not only an interest in 
the subject but a knowledge of it and a considera- 
tion of the essential principles involved in the 

162 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

particular measure under consideration. Edi- 
torials from influential newspapers published at 
timely periods are another form of pressure in the 
right way. Personal requests from the constitu- 
ents of members are probably of even more potent 
influence. 

There is great danger from the amateur in this 
field. The writing of letters to members of the 
legislature, as well as the sending of telegrams, 
has been greatly overdone in recent years; so 
much so that it would almost seem as if this 
method of influencing public sentiment were los- 
ing such value as it once had. When rightly 
done, I know of nothing, however, that can take 
its place. The thing to be guarded against is 
making it mechanical; especially sending printed 
letters or postal cards to individuals asking them 
to sign and send to their representatives. Such 
documents are of no more value than the petition 
and are in fact only another form of it. 

Some objection pertains to organized letter 
writing even when properly done. It is of course 
impossible to expect that the members of the 
legislature will not recognize the fact that such 
expressions of opinion are sent them by request 
and are to a greater or less extent inspired. This 
will be discounted by them, but there will still 
remain strongly impressed upon their minds the 
extent of the organization that exists in behalf 
of a particular project and an appreciation on their 
part that a considerable number of people among 

163 



HOUSING REFORM 

their constituents are sufficiently interested in the 
subject to write letters upon the request of some 
person more deeply interested. The pressure 
must be in the right way. 

It must also be by the right person. The 
opinion of the man who is totally unknown to a 
member of the legislature can not be expected 
to have very much influence upon him, and yet 
many social reformers lose sight of this completely; 
they seem to think that it is the number of demon- 
strations which counts, not the quality. Find 
out who the man is that has the greatest influence 
with the particular senator or assemblyman that 
you want to interest in your project and reach 
him through his friend. If you are seeking politi- 
cal influence, enlist his political chief in the cause. 
Sometimes it may be the district leader; some- 
times the state committeeman; sometimes it may 
be the governor of the state. The pressure must 
be by the right person. 

A legislative campaign is akin to warfare. It 
is Hke a military campaign and in it the regulars 
always have the advantage of the volunteers; 
they know the game; they are not gun-shy; they 
have been on the firing line before; they know 
what to expect. As in ordinary warfare, organi- 
zation is essential to success. To be successful 
there must be a plan of campaign, and that plan 
must be carried out by shrewd generals who have 
won their right to lead by success in many cam- 
paigns. Above all things, there must be recog- 

164 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

nized leadership. Mob rule can not succeed here 
any more than in ordinary warfare. 

Sometimes the enemy must be fought by his 
own methods; strategy must be resorted to when 
necessary; every move in the game must at times 
be taken advantage of. If to secure its success- 
ful passage it is necessary to manoeuvre — to cast 
your bill in certain forms in order to get it before 
a committee which will be favorable to it and 
away from a committee which will be antag- 
onistic to it — this must be done. 

Progress in legislation rests on compromise. 
The member of the legislature is pulled this way 
and that by conflicting interests. He is told by 
one group of people that the project under con- 
sideration is visionary and will result in great 
injury to important interests; by another group 
that it is a sane, practicable, common-sense plan, 
commended by the entire community except one 
or two particular interests which are adversely 
affected by it. With no direct sources of informa- 
tion, as far as he can see the opinions of the one 
group are entitled to as much consideration as 
the other. The legislator generally solves the 
difficulty by compromising: by giving something 
to one group and taking a little from the other. 
This generally satisfies neither; but in the long 
run the various interests adjust themselves to such 
decisions and often with surprising facility. 

Social reformers should recognize this and should 
base their recommendations upon it. They should 

165 



HOUSING REFORM 

not make the error of compromising before they 
have to; of anticipating the opposition that is 
going to be brought against the measures they 
have in view and saying to themselves: "We dare 
not go this far because such and such interests 
will be sure to oppose us and there is no hope of 
securing what we desire." The result is that, 
having compromised in advance of the necessity, 
they are forced when the actual occasion arrives 
to compromise still further and to consent to the 
enactment of something that is far below the 
standard that would have been possible. Don't 
compromise until you have to. It is also a good 
thing to have something to compromise with. 
If you expect and earnestly desire to secure the 
enactment of a housing law, for instance, limiting 
the percentage of lot that may be covered to 
seventy per cent, don't start with any such 
standard in your proposal. Start at sixty-five; 
have five per cent to compromise with. If you 
start at seventy, you may be quite sure that you 
will end at seventy-five. 

It is also vitally important to be prepared to 
legislate on a basis of fact and not on impressions. 
You must not only know your facts but be able 
to demonstrate conclusively to the members of the 
legislature that you know them and that you 
stand upon solid ground. Do not forget also, 
that they come from widely scattered communi- 
ties and may not be familiar with the conditions 
which you are seeking to remedy. As a rule, the 

i66 



HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 

rural members of a legislature need to be thor- 
oughly enlightened with regard to housing con- 
ditions which prevail in cities. Such conditions 
they do not dream can exist. They should see 
the conditions at first hand. Where this is not 
possible, they should see photographs and often 
models. 

When he has been informed and aroused it will 
generally be found that the rural member of the 
legislature is a most potent ally in housing reform. 
He has not become case-hardened to the condi- 
tions which prevail in the cities, he is not subject 
to the pressure of the local influences there which 
desire to perpetuate them and he has standards 
which make the conditions that prevail in most 
cities seem to him intolerable and to cry aloud 
for remedy. 

It is wise, too, to constantly remind oneself 
that the members of the legislature are subject to 
human influences; that startling as it may seem, 
they may vote for your measure, not because of 
its merits, but because of their friendship for you 
or for the member who happens to sit next to 
them who wants to see the bill pass. 

One word of caution against overdoing it in 
campaigning for legislative reforms. The social 
worker in his zeal runs a very serious risk of 
wearing out his welcome; — of importuning the 
members of the legislature too much. Do not 
lose your perspective. The member of the legis- 
lature is interested in a great many other things. 

167 



HOUSING REFORM 

Your measure is but one very small, minor matter 
to him — a mere incident of the session. 

To sum it up: Legislative reforms are to be 
accomplished only by patient, skilled, well- 
directed effort. They are not achieved by acci- 
dent, inspiration or enthusiasm. 



i68 



XIII 
THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 



XIII 
THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

WHILE the main burden in the movement 
for housing reform must be borne by 
pubHc officials, there is a large field 
to be occupied by private citizens. The two ef- 
forts must supplement each other at every point. 
Neither alone is sufficient. But the two fields are 
distinct. There are many things which the govern- 
ment may do which can not be done effectively by 
private citizens; and there are many things that it 
is better for the private citizen to do than for the 
government to undertake. It is quite impossible, 
for instance, for private effort to see to it effectively 
that thousands of tenement houses or even hun- 
dreds are maintained in a sanitary condition. 
This is clearly a governmental function. On the 
other hand there is much to be done which it is 
not the province of government to assume. 

The first and most important way in which 
private citizens can aid the cause of housing 
reform is in the organization of a citizens' com- 
mittee for the purpose of securing such legislation 
as may be necessary to regulate the construction 
and supervise the maintenance of the homes of 

171 



HOUSING REFORM 

the people and to provide the adequate adminis- 
trative machinery for carrying such laws into 
eflfect. 

The mistake that is too often made by many 
people is in losing their interest and in feeling 
that their work is accomplished when some 
legislative reform has been achieved. So far 
from being the termination of their efforts such a 
period should really mark the beginning of their 
main work. Any important change in the laws 
will at first bring opposition from those interests 
which are affected by it. Unless its friends are 
alert, it frequently happens that important legis- 
lative reforms are within a year or two nullified 
by the interests adversely affected. 

Moreover, housing laws are difficult to frame. 
It is not always possible to anticipate with suffi- 
cient precision, conditions which may arise, and it 
will generally be found that such enactments 
need subsequent amendment. It is far better 
that housing laws should be amended by their 
friends than by their enemies. If their friends do 
not act you may be sure that their enemies will. 
Private citizens should, therefore, after bringing 
about some important legislative reform, watch 
with great care its effect, and with an open mind 
be prepared to make such changes as may be 
necessary to make it more perfectly accomplish 
the ends desired and to remove any unnecessary 
hardship that may have been unwittingly involved. 

Then there is a very important and valuable 
172 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

function to perform in aiding administrative of- 
ficers in the interpretation of laws which often 
they have had no part in formulating. This is a 
very real service. The intent of a statute may 
have been very clear in the mind of the person 
who framed it, but it may seem to have a totally 
different meaning and purpose to some one else 
who is interpreting it without that particular 
knowledge. 

The next important way in which citizens can 
advance the cause of housing reform is through a 
permanent and adequate system of what may be 
termed "law enforcement" — namely, of seeing 
that the local authorities properly administer the 
laws. At first thought it would appear that this 
ought not to be necessary; that citizens should 
not have to hire some outside person to watch 
the enforcement of statutes by public officials 
whose compensation they are taxed to defray. 
This unofficial government, however, is a necessity 
especially in the large cities. Municipal adminis- 
tration has become so complex and the functions 
of the municipahty so much extended, that without 
this public-spirited service on the part of citizens 
there is serious danger of the failure of democratic 
institutions. 

There could not be a more wholesome stimulus 
for the public official, than the knowledge that a 
group of leading citizens is vitally interested in 
the proper administration of his department and 
that they are contributing time and money to 

173 



HOUSING REFORM 

that end. Such a scheme of law enforcement 
should be on a basis of co-operation with the public 
officials and not on a basis of antagonistic criti- 
cism. It must assume that the public official is 
honest and conscientious and desires to secure 
the best administration of his department, even 
when it seems otherwise. It is surprising to see 
the way in which even the worst politician responds 
to an appeal upon such a basis. Realizing the 
standard that has been set for him and that 
public sentiment expects him to adhere to such 
a standard, he becomes stimulated to greater 
efforts and more efficient work, if only through 
fear of the criticism that will be directed to him. 
Of course there are occasions when it becomes 
necessary to frankly and severely criticise the 
head of a department, even going so far as 
to demand his removal from office when once 
convinced that any proper administration of the 
department under him is hopeless. Such proce- 
dure, however, should be resorted to only where 
all reasonable efforts to bring about a better 
administration have failed and where there is a 
fair expectation of securing the appointment of a 
better man in his place. Charges against public 
officials are often too recklessly preferred by 
private citizens in reform movements. It is a 
dangerous thing to undertake, unless one is very 
sure of the facts. A public official has a very 
disconcerting way sometimes of knowing more 
about the subject than the private citizen and 

174 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

of making charges seem very ridiculous. No one 
thing stands out more strikingly in the history of 
the effort for municipal reform than the failure 
of the reformer to make good in such instances. 
The trouble is that he relies too much upon his 
own belief as to the inefficiency and bad faith of 
the official, not realizing that to secure his removal 
from office he must be able to prove conclusively 
to the removing officer clear-cut, specific instances 
which, beyond shadow of doubt, indicate the un- 
fitness of the public official for his office. There 
is a great difference between moral certainty and 
legal certainty. 

There is another side to it as well. The public 
official is human and susceptible to the influences 
which ordinarily affect human beings. The people 
he finds friendly and helpful to him are likely to 
have influence with him. The people who criti- 
cize him unjustly, without an appreciation of the 
limitations and difficulties under which he is 
working, he is apt not to give much heed to. 
Here again is another point of difficulty. In such 
movements few citizens take the time to familiar- 
ize themselves with the limitations under which 
municipal officers work. They see a tenement 
house in an unsanitary condition and they at 
once assume that the official is neglecting his 
duties. As a rule they seldom ask themselves 
whether these conditions may not have had his 
attention already and what the reasons may be 
which have led to the continuance of this apparent 

175 



HOUSING REFORM 

neglect. Few realize how long it takes sometimes 
to bring about improvements in a particular case. 

Social workers frequently offend in this way. 
They complain to the health officer about some 
unsanitary condition and then perhaps a week 
later, finding no change in the situation, condemn 
the officer for not having performed his duty and 
state that there is no use in sending complaints 
to him; not realizing the length of time necessarily 
consumed in such matters nor the various processes 
that must be gone through before results can be 
obtained. Especially in this connection we should 
apply to ourselves the old warning, *' I pray you 
by the mercies of God to remember that you may 
be mistaken." 

For these reasons, and for many others, it will 
be found that it is unwise to attempt any plan 
of law enforcement — that is, of calling the atten- 
tion of the municipal authorities to housing evils 
which require attention — through volunteer work- 
ers. In the first place it is very difficult to secure 
volunteers who have a working knowledge of 
what constitutes bad housing conditions, and no 
volunteer worker can as a rule give the time for 
the patient and careful study that is necessary to 
equip him with the expert sanitary knowledge that 
is requisite in such work. It is essential, there- 
fore, in any movement of this kind, to have the 
services of a competent, properly compensated, 
trained expert. 

Where any plan of law enforcement is taken up 
176 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

it will be found best to proceed upon a district 
basis; that is, to concentrate on a given neigh- 
borhood and to systematically inspect one house 
after another in that neighborhood, calling the 
attention of the local authorities to the conditions 
that are discovered. This is far wiser than at- 
tempting to spread out all over the city at one 
time and much fairer to owners and to the en- 
forcing authorities. 

Another important way in which the private 
citizen can aid the cause of housing reform is in 
the formation of companies to take over the 
management of tenement houses. In some cities 
this has been combined with the ownership of 
model tenements, where a company already run- 
ning such house has advantageously taken over 
the management of other tenements. But the two 
are not necessarily connected. 

Housing evils are in the main due to the fact" 
that the owners of the property are either unaware 
or neglectful of the conditions which exist or are 
ignorant of the right way in which to manage 
property of this kind. The city can do much in 
forcing owners to keep their property in a sanitary 
condition, but this is an unending task. Few 
cities are sufficiently well equipped to do this 
adequately. Their work should be supplemented, 
therefore, as far as possible by private effort. The 
simplest and wisest way to supplement it is to sub- 
stitute for a neglectful, ignorant and careless land- 
lord, a careful, conscientious and attentive one. 
12 177 



HOUSING REFORM 

This by no means necessitates any change in the 
ownership of the property. It is a question of 
management. The management of a tenement 
house in which there are many famihes is not a sim- 
ple task. It requires experience, good judgment, 
patience, tact, intelHgence and knowledge of hu- 
man nature. It should be done by persons who 
by temperament and experience are fitted for 
this particular field. Good management of tene- 
ment houses pays. A well managed tenement 
house is more profitable in the long run to an 
owner than a poorly managed one. In such 
houses there are fewer losses from vacant rooms 
and from bad debts, and a much smaller bill for 
repairs. 

Next to securing improved laws and their proper 
administration, no better form of private effort 
can be found than the formation of companies for 
the proper, efficient and economical management 
of tenement house property. Excellent results 
in this direction have been obtained in London, 
and in America, especially in Philadelphia through 
the work of the Octavia Hill Association. The 
City and Suburban Homes Company of New York 
has recently extended its work into this field and 
is obtaining satisfactory results. 

In this work there is a distinct opportunity for 
women. A woman as a rule is more successful 
than a man. This is not strange, as the larger 
part of tenement house management is nothing 
more nor less than sympathetic understanding 

178 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

and good housekeeping. The secret of success is 
in maintaining satisfactory relations with the 
tenants, in making them consider it a real privilege 
to live in your house and a calamity to be forced 
to go elsewhere. This result is not so difficult to 
bring about as it may seem. As soon as the 
tenants experience the benefits of the new regime 
and realize that their landlord has human relations 
with them, most obstacles to a proper understand- 
ing disappear. 

Of course a proper understanding can not be 
had with tenants unless they are decent people; 
but decent landlords need have no other kind. 
If they get them, it is entirely their own fault. 
That they do get them to the great extent which 
they now do, is not surprising in view of the fact 
that they make little effort to safeguard them- 
selves. Nothing is easier than keeping out of 
one's house objectionable tenants, provided one 
is willing to take a little pains. It is a perfectly 
simple thing before taking in new tenants, to 
require references as to character, especially from 
the places in which they have previously resided. 
It is equally simple to adopt the practice of visit- 
ing their previous residences and there ascertain- 
ing the essential things with regard to them, 
namely, whether they are respectable, temperate 
people and pay their rent promptly. This is an 
essential prerequisite to proper tenement house 
management. 

Another very desirable thing is to make it to 
179 



HOUSING REFORM 

the interest of the tenants to take care of the house 
as if it were their own property. The best method 
that has been devised thus far of accompHshing 
this has been the admirable plan that is adopted 
by some companies, of allowing each family 
repairs and re-decorations each year to the amount 
of one month's rent and then permitting the ten- 
ants, if they so maintain their rooms that it is 
not necessary to spend this money, to have the 
benefit of it as a deduction from their rent. This 
gives to each family a direct incentive to careful 
use of the apartments. 

Another form of effort in which private citizens 
may wisely engage is in buying up from time to 
time some of the more antiquated houses, im- 
proving them in the more essential respects, 
letting light into dark rooms, doing away with 
antiquated sanitary conveniences and substitut- 
ing modern ones, improving generally the tone, 
appearance and quality of the house, and, when 
such renovation has been completed, putting in a 
higher grade of tenants and then, as opportunity 
offers, selling the building at a reasonable advance 
and investing the money in other buildings, and 
repeating this process indefinitely. One's capital 
is thus always live capital, and a large field of 
influence is possible. It is an excellent way also 
of stimulating other owners to the improvement 
of their property. If a number of houses in a 
neighborhood are improved in this way it will be 

1 80 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

found that other owners will wake up to the neces- 
sity of making similar changes in their property. 

There is almost an unHmited field to be occupied 
in the study of social conditions and the deter- 
mination of their relation to housing problems. 
Such questions as rentals, overcrowding, the lodger 
evil, tenement labor, offer wide fields of effort for 
the good of the community. 

In general, a fruitful source of endeavor is to 
be found in the education of the community. 
This indeed is a prerequisite to all successful 
effort. A campaign for improved housing laws 
can not succeed until there has been created a 
sound public sentiment which demands their 
enactment and is unwilling to tolerate the further 
existence of unsanitary conditions. 

The most potent factor in creating this sentiment 
is the press. Here is the means of quickly and 
in a striking way reaching thousands of people in 
a few moments, where by any other method only 
hundreds could be reached during a considerable 
period. Without the support of the press little 
progress can be expected in housing reform in any 
community. As a rule it is not difficult to obtain 
that support. The policy of a paper is determined 
by its proprietor and its editors, and they are 
influenced primarily by what they think will appeal 
to the intelligence and judgment of their readers. 
In addition, editors and newspaper proprietors 
are of course influenced by the views of their 
friends and by the views of men of standing in the 

i8i 



HOUSING REFORM 

community. Sometimes in rare instances such 
influence is exerted against the cause of housing 
reform. Owners of unsanitary tenements, some- 
times our **best citizens/' exert their influence to 
prevent the passage and enforcement of laws which 
may affect them financially. This, however, is 
not a condition that generally prevails. 

The best appeal, however, to the editor or 
proprietor of a paper is the appeal to his own rea- 
son. You are not only dealing with an editor, 
but with a man. If there are conditions in your 
city which cry aloud for remedy, which are in- 
tolerable, which produce disease and death and 
lead to social and moral degradation, you do not 
need to rest your effort to secure the support of a 
particular newspaper upon the recommendations 
of any citizen, no matter how influential he may 
be. There is a much easier and simpler way. 
Take your editor to the conditions and let him 
observe them at first hand. It takes a little more 
time to do this but the effort is more than amply 
repaid. An impression thus gained is not easily 
eradicated. One actual physical inspection by 
the editor in person is worth all the articles that 
you may ever send him for publication. This is 
the keynote of the whole educational movement 
in housing reform. Let the people understand 
the facts. Where they cannot see conditions at 
first hand acquaint them with such conditions by 
means of photographs. 

The education of the community must go on 
182 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

all the time. It is not something to be done at 
one particular moment and then dropped. It is 
an inherent part of any scheme for housing im- 
provement. The community must progress with 
you if you are to expect advanced standards. 

There is a very large field to be cultivated in 
educating tenants to a better knowledge of right 
ways of living and to a higher standard of their 
own responsibilities. Even though the landlord 
neglects to care for the public parts of his building 
the fact remains that if each tenant had a keen 
sense of responsibility for the maintenance of 
sanitary conditions, few unsanitary conditions 
would exist. The increasing foreign population 
seriously complicates the problem. Ignorant of 
our language, and not accustomed to methods 
of living that they fmd here, they do not easily 
adapt themselves to the changed conditions, and 
frequently adopt habits which render difficult 
the maintenance of proper standards. Most of 
them err through ignorance, not by intent; 
perhaps it would be more accurate to say through 
thoughtlessness. It is so much easier to throw 
waste material out of a window of a tenement if 
one lives on the upper stories than it is to put it 
in a pail and carry it down several flights of stairs. 
Many who do this would not do so if they under- 
stood that this practice resulted in conditions 
which cause sickness to themselves and their 
children as well as to their neighbors. 

The importance of adequate ventilation in their 
183 



HOUSING REFORM 

homes has never been impressed upon them. It 
is only in rare instances that one finds a tenement 
house dweller awake to this. One may provide 
tenement houses with large rooms, with ample 
light and air and yet the tenants by keeping 
their windows shut day and night, live in close, 
badly ventilated rooms. They must be taught 
the significance of good ventilation and of bad 
ventilation, and they must be taught in a way that 
they will comprehend. You can not appeal to 
them successfully on abstract principles, but you 
can appeal most successfully if you make your 
appeal direct and personal. 

How valuable would be a movement which in- 
structed tenants thoroughly with regard to the im- 
portance of having their windows open at night; 
which broke down the old superstition of the dan- 
gers of night air — inbred for generations in the 
Italian peasants who come to this country. It 
is not strange that this belief should still prevail 
among the simple working people who have come 
here from various European countries, where ow- 
ing to the prevalence of malaria-breeding mos- 
quitoes, the practice of keeping windows open at 
night was a menace. 

How many tenants understand modern plumb- 
ing or realize the dangers connected with it and 
the necessity for its proper care? They have some 
waste material they wish to dispose of, and what 
more natural than for them to put it in the closet? 
It disappears and bothers them no more — so they 

184 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

think. They do not realize that they may be 
creating serious sanitary evils, which will result 
in unnecessary expense to the landlord and, if 
neglected by him, in sickness to themselves and to 
other tenants. 

An organized movement, therefore, for the 
education of tenants in the essential affairs of 
domestic life would be most profitable in its 
results. Such a plan could be wisely carried out 
in two ways: First, through proper instruction in 
the public schools, thus reaching the children and 
insuring that the next generation shall have had 
the opportunity of appreciating the significance 
of these questions. A considerable amount of 
this information will filter from the child to its 
parents. 

The other method would be through the sys- 
tematic visitation in their homes in accordance 
with a well developed plan, of each family in a 
given neighborhood by some person with a special 
gift for influencing people of this kind. Such a 
plan has been carried out very successfully in some 
cities, notably, in the City of Yonkers, where for 
several years past a woman inspector connected 
with the Health Department has carried on such 
work. Her work has not been limited, however, 
solely to the sanitary care of the home but has 
embraced such important questions as the care of 
children, proper diet, methods of cooking, as well 
as questions of personal and house cleanliness. 
An important adjunct to any such plan is the dis- 

185 



HOUSING REFORM 

tribution of educational leaflets. These, however, 
should be put in very simple form to be effective. 
It will be found as a rule that the greatest influ- 
ence will come from the personal relationships es- 
tablished. 

Almost, though not quite, as important is the 
education of the landlord. A man who has 
acquired property is not likely to believe that he 
needs to be instructed with regard to its manage- 
ment. He is quite confident, as a rule, that he 
understands how to run his house better than 
anybody else. Sometimes he does. Often, how- 
ever, he does not. The test of it is found in the 
conditions that exist. If his house is clean, 
orderly, the tenants of good character, the vacan- 
cies few and his bills for repairs small, it is quite 
obvious that he needs no instruction from any- 
body as to how to run his building. If, on the 
other hand, the house is in an unsanitary con- 
dition, or there is an undue number of vacant 
apartments or he is obtaining comparatively little 
income from his property, it is pretty evident that 
the house is not being well managed and that the 
landlord has something to learn. Even in such 
cases he will be loath to admit this. The landlord 
under such circumstances, when urged to consider 
whether the management of his property can not 
be improved, is likely to reply in the same vein 
as did the tenant who, when urged by the woman 
sanitary inspector to make certain changes with 
regard to her methods of caring for her children, 

1 86 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

replied that ''she guessed she didn't need anybody 
to tell her how to bring up children; she had 
buried seven of them." 

The method of approach is the same in both 
cases. The tenant must be made to see that the 
fact that she had buried seven children was an 
indictment of her methods of management; the 
landlord must be made to see that the fact that 
he has to spend large sums of money each year 
on repairs, that he loses a great deal of money on 
account of vacant apartments and bad debts, is 
an indictment of his methods of running his house. 

What are the main things which the landlord 
needs to learn? The first and most vital thing 
for him to learn is that it is against his interest 
to have unsanitary conditions prevail in his 
property; that it is to his interest to have his 
property maintained in a clean and proper con- 
dition; that even though this involves spending 
money, it will be money saved in the end; that 
the character of his tenants is of vital concern to 
him and that he has it within his power to choose 
his tenants; that there is more profit in having a 
house filled with contented people who desire to 
remain there for a long time, and with no vacant 
apartments, than there is in having many vacant 
apartments and a few tenants paying higher 
rents; and, finally, the landlord should have 
awakened in him a sense of moral responsibility 
with regard to the welfare of his tenants. He has 
an unusual opportunity for influencing for good 

187 



HOUSING REFORM 

or ill the welfare of hundreds of lives. Such an 
appeal can not be made in the first instance, 
perhaps, but can be made ultimately. The appeal 
to self-interest is the one that must be made first; 
the appeal to enlightened conscience afterward. 

How is the education of landlords to be brought 
about? Just exactly as the education of tenants: 
In an organized way by people who know more 
about the landlord's business than he does. It 
will not do to send people to teach him who are 
not competent to teach. It will not do to send 
people who can not gain his confidence. You 
must first get your influence before you use it. 
You can't get your influence with the landlord 
unless he is convinced that your knowledge of the 
subject exceeds his own. That, you have to de- 
monstrate. He will not take you at your own es- 
timate or at that of another. You must let him 
see what is being done by other landlords and 
the advantages that accrue from their methods, 
and you must be prepared for his resisting every 
suggestion you make. In that regard he is alto- 
gether human. 

Another form of useful efl'ort along educational 
lines is in the training of janitors for the care of 
tenement houses. In our large cities where the 
type of house is one occupied by many families 
and where a janitor or resident housekeeper is 
essential, this is of greater importance than in 
the smaller communities. It is not strange that 
tenement houses are often kept in a neglected 

1 88 



THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 

condition when we reflect that we entrust the 
care of twenty famiHes — one hundred people — the 
adjustment of their social differences, the decision 
as to the use of the public parts of the building, the 
necessary discipline, etc., to some ignorant man 
or woman totally unfamiliar with sanitary require- 
ments, with no special standards of their own, with 
no knowledge of sanitary plumbing or what it 
means and with generally such inadequate com- 
pensation that it necessitates their following some 
other occupation for their main source of income 
and devoting to the care of the house and the 
twenty families, only such small portions of their 
time as they can spare from their regular business. 

Many tenement house owners would be glad to 
employ competent janitors if they could obtain 
them, and would be glad to compensate such men 
adequately. It is, however, almost impossible to 
obtain a good janitor. In the first place there 
is no source of supply, no employment agencies 
where they can be obtained. No special quali- 
fications are required and there is no method of 
training. No one thus far has attempted to 
equip the janitor for his duties. 

What is greatly needed in such cities as New 
York, Boston and Chicago, is a training school for 
janitors where they can learn both the theory and 
practice of their work; can be made familiar with 
the laws and ordinances bearing upon it, with 
the rights of landlords and the rights of tenants; 
where they can be instructed in a practical way 

189 



HOUSING REFORM 

in their duties; where they can be taken through 
a tenement house and shown the relations of 
the plumbing to the health of the occupants, can 
learn how to make ordinary repairs to plumbing, 
to remove obstructions in pipes and fixtures; 
can learn how to do the necessary odd jobs of 
carpenter work that every tenement house re- 
quires; be taught the importance of maintaining 
high standards of sanitary conditions; the best 
way to handle garbage, ashes and other refuse; the 
necessity of ventilation in all parts of such a build- 
ing, the frequent airing of public halls — in a word, 
can learn in a practical way the bearing of all 
their duties upon the lives of the people whom 
they are put there to serve, and upon the financial 
interests of their employers. If such a training 
school were established and properly managed, 
it is reasonable to expect that only competent 
trained janitors would ultimately be employed by 
real estate owners. Such a training school must 
come in the near future. London has its sanitary 
institute, but no American city has anything of 
the kind. 

These are some of the more important forms of 
work that can be undertaken advantageously by 
persons interested in improving housing conditions. 
All of them, however, will be comparatively in- 
effective unless preceded by a successful effort to 
secure the enactment of laws that will regulate 
adequately theconstruction and maintenance of the 
houses in which the great mass of the people live. 

190 



XIV 
A CHAPTER OF DONTS 



XIV 
A CHAPTER OF DONTS 

DON'T let your city become a city of tene- 
ments. Keep it a city of homes. 
Don't imagine there is no necessity for 
action because conditions in your city are not as 
bad as they are elsewhere. 

Don't build a model tenement until you have 
secured a model housing law. 

Don't attempt to legislate first and investigate 
afterwards. 

Don't permit any new houses to be built that 
do not have adequate light and ventilation and 
proper sanitation. 

Don't legislate merely for the present. 

Don't permit the growth of new slums. Pre- 
vention is better than cure. 

Don't urge that all new houses shall be fireproof. 

Don't permit the occupancy of new houses if 
built in violation of law. 

Don't lightly give discretionary power to the 
officials who enforce your housing laws. 

Don't urge the creation of a Tenement House 
Department, unless you have more than 25,000 
tenement houses. 

13 193 



HOUSING REFORM 

Don't complain of the enforcing authorities 
until you are familiar with their methods of 
administration. 

Don't tolerate cellar dwellings. 

Don't let the poor be denied a liberal supply of 
water in their homes. 

Don't permit houses unfit for human habitation 
to be occupied. 

Don't urge at first the reconstruction of the 
older houses. Let this wait until after other 
things have been done. 

Don't permit privies to exist in any city. 
Compel their removal. 

Don't urge the destruction of unsanitary 
buildings. Keep them empty if they are not fit 
for human habitation. 

Don't tolerate the lodger evil. Nip it in the bud. 

Don't take up minor matters, but attack the 
worst evils first. 

Don't allow the enforcement of housing laws to 
be nullified by politicians. 

Don't neglect the landlord's side of the question. 

Don't repeat the talk about the poor not want- 
ing good housing accommodations. 

Don't urge the municipal ownership and opera- 
tion of tenement houses. 

Don't ask the poor questions about themselves 
in housing investigations but about their houses. 

Don't resort to criticism of public officials until 
you have tried co-operation. 



194 



A CHAPTER OF DON TS 

Don't rely on the death rate alone as an index 
of good or bad housing conditions. 

Don't confuse the fields of public and private 
effort. 

Don't cease your efforts when you have passed 
a good law. Eternal vigilance is not only the 
price of liberty, but of all progress. 



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199 



INDEX 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Accommodations 

housing, scarcity un- 
likely 18-20 

Administration 

of housing laws. See 
Enforcement and Mu- 
nicipal 
Air-shafts, 10, 103-107, 126-127 

Air Space 

as a standard of ventila- 
tion 29-30, 105 

Aldermen 

and City Councils 1 5 i-i 53 

Alterations.. 105-107, 131-132 
Animals 

in tenement houses. . . 1 19-120 
Architects 

and housing laws 9 1 , 92 

"Back-to-back" Tene- 
ments 23 

Bathing Facilities 
lack of, in tenements, 10, 17-18 

requirements for i lo-i 12 

coal in the bath-tub 
story discredited 17-18 

Baths 
public, patronage of 18 

Boss 
political 158-160 

Builders 
and provision of housing 

accommodations 19 

and model tenements, 64, 71- 

73 

and municipal control, 81-82 

and housing regulations, 92-93, 

96-97, 1 1 i-i 12, 127, 

132-134, 152 



Buildings 
department or bureau of. 
See Department. 



Caretakers 1 12-1 13 

Cellar Dwellings, 3, 66, 118- 

119 

Charitable Workers. See 

Social workers 
Child 
effect of bad housing 
upon 5 

CiRCULARIZATION I 55 

Citizens 

neglect and ignorance 
of 4 

Citizens' committees 

how constituted 49> 50 

proper functions of .. 17 i-i 77 

City and Suburban 
Homes Company 69 

City life 

and country life 30-32 

attractions of city 32 

Civil Process 146 

Civil Service Employees 

129-130 

Cleanliness 

efforts of poor to obtain . 17-18 
provision of bathing 

facilities i lo-i 12 

care of premises. . .40, 1 13-1 14 
standards for 59 

Coal 

in the bath-tub, story 
discredited 17-18 

Commissioner 

of Health, powers of ... . 90 



207 



INDEX 



Committee 

on housing reform, its 

function two-fold 49 

personnel 49-5 1 

qualifications of execu- 
tive 51 

duties of 52 

Committees 

legislative 161-162 

Community 

and housing evils, 4, 12, 43- 
44, 49, 52 
Competition 

municipal control would 

drive out 81-82 

Complaints 

futility of 124, 134-136 

Congestion 

and overcrowding, in 

New York 8, 1 1 

general discussion 25-35 

difficulty of setting stan- 
dards 27-30 

room overcrowding. . 28-29, 32 
air space as a standard. . 29-30 
relief measures suggested30-35 
distribution of popula- 
tion one remedy 30-32 

Construction 

responsibihtyfor 125, 126 

Corruption 

municipal, in connection 

with building 92-93 

Courts 

attitude of 142-144 

Criminal process 140 

Dark rooms 3, 5,8, 10, 59 

Death rate 
and bad housing condi- 
tions 22-24 

Department 

of buildings 123, 125 

and the building inter- 
ests 127 

of public safety 1 23 



Destruction 
of unsanitary buildings 20, 32- 

33 

Dilapidation 

not necessarily an evil. . , 20 
Discretionary Power, 

dangers of granting 90-94 

Distribution 

of population, one rem- 
edy for congestion . . . .30-32 

Dont's 

a chapter of 191-195 

Drainage 3, 40, 108-109 

"Dumb-bell" Tenements 10 

Earning Capacity 

affected by bad housing . 5 
Enforcement 

of housing laws 44-45, 121- 
148 

qualifications of officials 

130-131 

responsibility for 123-124 

Environment 4, 5, 16-17 

Executive 

of housing committee ... 5 1-52 

Facts 

knowledge of essential to 
housing reform, 44, 52-53, 



% 



Fallacies 

popular 13-24 

with regard to the poor. .15-18 

lack of shelter 18-20 

dilapidation 20 

destruction of buildings. 20-21 

rear tenements 21-23 

on the death rate 23-24 

Fines 
futility of 131 

Fire 

protection against, 10, 40-42, 
114-118, 125 
department and housing 
laws 124 



208 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Fire-escapes 
material and construc- 
tion 1 14-1 16 

blocking of 146 

Fires 117, 118 

Foreign population 
as factor in the housing 
problem 42 



Graft 

See Corruption 
Greed 

a cause of housing evils. . 



Health Department 
and administration of 
housing laws, 125, 126, 127- 
128, 137-139, 140-143 
tenement house bureau 

in I2Q 

women inspectors 130 

and politics 147-148 

Height 
of buildings 96-97, 102, 116 

Homes 
importance of good ... 6, 1 1 - 1 2 
and the lodger evil 33 

Housing 
Committee on. 
See Committee 

Housing Evils 

manifestations of 3 

causes 3-4 

crystallized in New York 7- 1 2 

unnecessary 12 

evidences of 24 

effect on community .... 43-44 
remedies for. . 30-35, 6G, 70-73 

Housing Investigation 

essentials of 53~^o 

schedules important .... 55 
preparation of schedules . 56-60 

Housing Laws 
must meet local needs. . . 44 



PAGE 

Housing Laws {Continued) 

administration 44-47 

relation to other stat- 
utes 4494-95 

essential principles of. . .^7-<)7 
knowledge of facts essen- 
tial 52-53 

terms should be definite . 89-90 
dangers of granting dis- 

rretionary power 90-94 

should look to future. . . . 95-97 
what a housing law 

should contain 99-120 

fundamental considera- 
tions lOI 

light and ventilation . . 1 01-107 

sanitation 107-1 12 

maintenance 1 12-1 14, 125, 126 
fire protection ... 1 14- 1 18, 125 

enforcement of 121-148 

advantages of state law 
over municipal ordi- 
nance 151 

amendments to 172 

Housing Problem 

is widespread 3 

distinct from tenement 

house problem 6 

a three-fold problem 37-46 

prevention of first im- 
portance 39 

sanitary, structural, and 

social 40-42 

duty of state toward 85-86 

Housing Reform 

basis for 20 

mistakes in, 21, 41,43,44-45, 

how to start a move- 
ment for 47-5 2 

committee on 49-5 1 

campaigns ... .51-52, 164-168 
in New York 71-73 



Ignorance 

a factor in housing evils . 4 
Injunction 141 



209 



INDEX 



Inspection 
to determine overcrowd- 

. i"g •••• 34-35 

importance of adequate 129- 

130, 134-140 

Interior Rooms, 103, 105, 106 

Investigation 

See Housing Investigation. 



Janitors 11 2-1 13 

training of 188-190 



Labor Men 

and housing legislation 1 55-1 56 
Land 
occupied. See Yard 

Spaces. 
overcrowding. See Over- 
crowding 

Landlords 

and overcrowding 35 

rights and duties of. ,42-43, 52 

the city as 78-80 

responsibility 144-145 

registration of 146-147 

education of 186-188 

Law Enforcement. . . . 173-177 

Laws. See Legislation and 

Housing Law 
Legal 
equipment of health de- 
partments 138-139 

processes, civil and crim- 
inal 140-144 

Legislation 
with regard to lodgers. . . 34-35 
administration and fi- 
nances 45-46 

importance of accurate 

knowledge in securing 44, 

52-53, 16) 

results of, in New York, 45-46, 

71, 73, 84, 91 

in relation to municipal 

control 81 



Legislation (Continued) 
constitutional limita- 
tions 86 

should deal with essen- 
tials 86 

essential principles of, 44-46, 
87-97 

enforcement 1 21-148 

advantages of state laws 151- 

«53 

methods of securing. . 153-168 

Legislative Reforms 

how to secure 151-168 

committees 161-162 

Lessons 
from New York's ex- 
perience . . .7-12, 45-46, 91, 
1 1 1 
Letters 
in securing legislative re- 
forms 162-164 

Light 
importance of, 3, 5, 8, 10, 22 
requirements for, in a 
housing law. . 101-107, 126- 
127 

Lodger Evil 3,33-35,42 

placing of responsibility 

for 35 

economic consequences 

of 33-34 

Lodging Houses 
in tenements 1 20 



Maintenance 112-114, 125, 126, 
134-148 
Management 
of tenements 177, 178 

Model Tenement Houses 20 
and their limitations. . . .61-73 
not a solution of the 

housing problem 63-66 

commercial builders not 

influenced by 64-65 

benefit but few. . .65-66,71-73 
in New York 67-68, 7 1-73 



210 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Model Tenement houses (Con- 
tinued) 
as charitable enterprises. 69 
"philanthropy and 5 per 

cent " 69 

effort and money often 

misplaced 70, 72-73 

Municipal 

functions 83-84 

operation, advantages 

and disadvantages of . 77-86 
European conditions dif- 
ferent 78 

the city as landlord 78-80 

civil service law an ob- 
stacle to efficient ad- 
ministration 80-81 

restrictive legislation .. . 81 
would kill competition. . 81-82 
ordinances, disadvan- 
tages of 1 51-153 

regulation 77-80 

tenements 77-86 



Neglect 

a cause of housing evils. . 4 

New Buildings 

methods of enforcement 
in 131-134 

New York 

tenement house problem 

in 6,7-12,71-73 

lessons to be learned 

from, 7-12, 45-46, 91, HI 
number and types of 
tenement houses, 10-11,117- 
118 
housing legislation in, 41, 45- 
46, 71-72, 91, 104, III- 
112, 117-118, 132-133, 137, 
142 
Tenement House De- 
partment viii, 45-46, 

128, 132, 138, 139, 147 
model tenements in... 67-68, 

71-73 
cost of tenements, in 1906 82 



OcTAviA Hill Associa- 
tion 178 

OuTPREMisEs 3, 109 

Overcrowding 

room and land 27-29, 32 

and the lodger evil 33-53 

remedies for 30-3 5 , 42 

See also Congestion 

Owners. See Landlords 



Parks. See Public Im- 
provements 

Penalties 144 

Petitions 
of little value 162 

"Philanthropy and Five 
percent" 69 

Photographs 
value of 60, 139-140, 155 

Plumbing, 3, 20,40, 108-109, 125 
ignorance of tenants 

with regard to 184-185 

Police Department 
and housing laws 1 24 

Police Power 

of state, in tenement 
house regulation 85-86 

Politics 

and housing reform, 50, 77-86, 
129-130, 147-148, 1 51-152, 
158-160, 164-168 
Poor 

the, misconceptions with 

regard to 15-18 

Population 

distribution of 30-32 

Poverty 
new view of 5 

Press 

the, its support essen- 
tial 153-154, 181-182 

Pressure 

on living accommodations 19 



211 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Prevention 

the best solution of 

housing evils 39, 70-7 1 

Private effort 

the field of 171-1Q0 

citizens' committees . . 1 71-177 

attitude toward officials 173- 

176 

district inspection 176-177 

companies to manage 

tenements 177-180 

through education. . . . 181-190 

Privies 3, 1 1,40, 108 

Programme 

for housing reform. . .. 171-190 
Prohibition 

of occupancy. See 
Vacating of Premises 
Prostitutes 

in tenement houses 119 

Public 

improvements, do not 

work hardship 19-20 

officials, ignorance of 

housing evils 4 

officials, attitude toward 174- 

176 

sentiment, power of. 153-160, 

181-182 

Public Baths. See Baths 



Rear Tenements 

not necessarily bad 21-23 

Registration 

of tenement owners. . . 146-147 

Relief Measures. See 

Remedies 
Remedies 
for congestion and over- 
crowding 30-35 

for bad housing condi- 
tions 66, 85 

police power of state .... 85-86 
See Legislation and 
Housing Laws 



Rents 

excessive 3,8 

and the lodger evil 33-3 5 

Reports 
of housing investigations 60 

Responsibility 

shifting of 124 

Room Overcrowding. 
See Overcrowding 

Rooms 

interior 103, 105, 106 

lighting of 105 

dark 3' 5- 8, 10, 59 

Sanitary 

conveniences in tene- 
ment houses II 

problems 40 

Sanitation 40, 107-112, 127-128 
See also Light, Plumb- 
ing, Heater Supply 
Schedules 

importance of, in hous- 
ing investigations 55-56 

preparation and use of . . 56-60 

order of subjects 57-58 

tabulation of results .... 60 

samples of 199-203 

"School-Sinks." 
See Privies 

Shelter 

scarcity of, unlikely 18-20 

Social Problems 

in relation to housing 
evils, 3,8,9, 16-17, 27, 33, 
42, 43, 85, 92-93. J '9 
Social Workers 

changed views of 4-^ 

in legislative campaigns 150, 

159, 166 

and law enforcement. .. . 176 

Stairs 

necessity for fireproof 
construction 117 



212 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Structural Problems 

in housing reform 40-42, loi- 
105 
Superintendent of 
Buildings 
dangers of granting dis- 
cretionary power to. . .90-94 

Sweating Evil 3, 42 



Tenants 

protection of 43, 145-146 

instruction of 183-186 

responsibility. ...112, 145-146 
selection of 179, 180 

Tenement House 

what constitutes a 7, 8 

"dumb-bell" 10 

rear 21-23 

"back-to-back" 23 

Tenement House Act 

of 1867 95 

of 1901 45, 1 17 

Tenement House Com- 
mission Ill 

Tenement House De- 
partment or bureau. . .45-46, 
128-129, 137 
See also New York 

Tenement House Prob- 
lem 

beginnings of 3. 6, 7 

restricted to few cities. . . 6, 7 
easily checked at outset. 6, 7 

in New York 8-12 

duty of the state toward. 85-86 
See Legislation and 
Housing Laws 



Tuberculosis 
and poverty. 



Unsanitary Houses 

to be vacated^2i, 107, 137, 138 



Vacating 

of premises. . .21, 107, 137, 138 
Ventilation 

importance of 8, 10, 20, 22, 
29-30 
requirements in a hous- 

inglaw 96-97, 101-107 

responsibility for secur- 
ing 125 

ignorance of tenants 
with regard to 183-184 

Volunteer workers 

and law enforcement 176 



Water-closets 109, 1 1 1 

Water Supply . ,3, 108-1 10, 125 

White, Alfred T. 

pioneer in building model 
tenements 69 

Women 

inspectors 130 

rent collectors 178, 179 

Workingmen 

normal housing condi- 
tions of 6, 7 

housing of, in New York . 8, 9 
and housing legislation 1 55-1 56 

Yard Spaces 95-97, 102, 131-132 



213 



A MODEL TENEMENT 
HOUSE LAW 

By Lawrence Veiller 

Author of "Housing Reform," etc. 

"A Model Tenement House Law'' is 
uniform in size with ''Housing Reform'' 
and is written as a companion volume. 

Specific sections cover every essential 
feature of a model housing law so arranged 
that by changing a word here or there it 
can be adopted by any community as a 
state law or a city ordinance. 

An invaluable aid for all persons formu- 
lating housing legislation. 

12mo. Price, postpaid, $1.25 



CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 
105 E. 22d Street, New York. 158 Adams Street, Chicago 



SOCIAL FORCES 

By EDWARD T. DEVINE 

Editor The Survey; General Secretary of the New York Charity Organiza- 
tion Society; Schiff Professor of Social Economy, Columbia University; 
Author of "Principles of Relief," "Misery and Ite Causes," 
"Efficiency and Relief," "The Practice of Charity," etc. 

Twenty-five editorials which discuss subjects 
of permanent interest have been chosen for 
this volume from among the six score or more 
written under the heading Social Forces in 
The Survey* Together they embody Dr. 
Devine's social philosophy in a most impressive 
way, and the book becomes a formulation of that 
**new view'* of which Dr* Devine has long been 
both exponent and advocate, and which sums 
up as *Hhe new view, prophetic though it be, 
of a social order in which ancient wrongs shall 
be righted, new corruptions foreseen and pre- 
vented, the nearest approach to equality of op- 
portunity assured, and the individual redis- 
covered under conditions vastly more favorable 
for his greatest usefulness to his fellows and 
for the highest development of all his powers/' 

SAID OF DR. DEVINE'S WRITING: 

The sane prophet of a new day. — New York " Times.*' 

Vigoroas analysis and comment. — Philadelphia 
** Public Ledger.'' 

Professor Devine is consistent, optimistic, stimu- 
lating. — Louisville ** Journal." 

It is a cheerful gospel, attractive to the practical man, 
repellent to none. — New York ** Times." 

His strategy is so far reaching and so ably argued, his 
knowledge of the hostile forces so exact, his confidence 
so unwavering, that the reader almost hears the vic- 
torious shouts of the regiments making the onslaught. 
** Poverty can and must be abolished"; that is the 
rallying cry. — **The Independent." 

I2mo, 226 pp. Price, postpaid, $X.25 

CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 
JOS E. 22d St., New York. 158 Adams St., Chicago 



THE 



SURVEY 

A JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE PHILANTHROPY 



THE SURVEY is a weekly magazine for all those who 
believe that progress in this country hinges on 
social service: that legislation, city government, the 
care of the unfortunate, the cure of the sick, the edu- 
cation of children, the work of men and the homes of 
women, must pass muster in their relation to the com- 
mon welfare. 

As Critic, The Survey examines conditions of life 
and labor, and points where they fail: how long hours, 
low pay, insanitary housing, disease, intemperance, in- 
discriminate charity, and lack of recreation, break down 
character and efficiency. 

As Student, The Survey examines immigration, in- 
dustry, congestion, unemployment, to furnish a solid 
basis of fact for intelligent and permanent betterment. 

As Program, The Survey stands for Prevention: Pre- 
vention of Poverty through wider opportunity and ade- 
quate charity; Prevention of Disease through long-range 
systems of sanitation, of hospitals and sanatoriums, of 
good homes, pure food and water, a chance for play 
out-of-doors; Prevention of Crime through fair laws, 
juvenile courts, real reformatories, indeterminate sen- 
tence, segregation, discipline and probation; Preven- 
tion of Inefficiency, both industrial and civic, through 
practice in democracy, restriction of child labor, fair 
hours, fair wages, enough leisure for reading and recrea- 
tion, compulsory school laws and schools that fit for 
life and labor, for the earning of income and for rational 
spending. 



EDWARD T. DEVINE EDITOR 

GRAHAM TAYLOR - ASSOCIATE EDITOR 

'"'s^IIt"" $2 00 YEARLY "--"' 

HEW YORK ^-^ i>^t\lKl^l ^,^^ 



RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 
PUBLICATIONS • 

THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 

A CLOSE RANGE INVESTIGATION OF CONDITIONS 

OF LIFE AND LABOR IN AN AMERICAN 

INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT 

Findings in Six Volumes 

Edited by 

PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG 



COLLEAGUES IN THE FIELD WORK 
Robert A. Woods, head worker, South End House, Boston, author of 

"Americans in Process," "The City Wilderness," etc. 
John R. Commons, professor, University of Wisconsin, Secretary 

American Association for Labor Legislation; author of "Trade 

Union and Labor Problems." 
Florence ELelley, Secretary National Consumers' League, former 

chief factory inspector, Illinois; author of "Ethical Gains Through 

Legislation." 
Lawrence Veiller, former secretary New York State Tenement 

House Commission; editor of "The Tenement House Problem." 
Peter Roberts, secretary for immigration, International Y. M. C. A.; 

author of "Anthracite Coal Industry," "Anthracite Coal Com- 
munities." 
Alois B. Koukol, secretary Slavonic Immigrant Society. 
Richard R. Wright, Jr., former head of Trinity Mission in the Black 

Belt, Chicago. 
Charles Mulford Robinson, civic advertiser for Denver, Columbus, 

Honolulu, etc., author of "Modem Civic Art," "Improvement of 

Towns and Cities." 
LiLA Verplanck North, member of faculty, College for Women, 

Baltimore. 
Florence Larrabee Lattimore, formerly of Children's Bureau, 

Seybert Institution, Philadelphia. 
Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, former secietaiy, New Jersey Con- 
sumers' League. 
John A. Fitch, Fellow, University of Wisconsin; expert New York 

State Department of Labor. 
Crystal Eastman, attomey-at-law, secretary New York State Com- 
mission on Employers' Liability. 
Margaret F. Byington, formerly of Boston Associated Charities, Red 

Cross Representative at Monongah Mine Disaster. 
And Others. 

SAID OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 

"The most careful and detailed study of Ufe and labor ever made in 
this country." — Review of Reviews. 

"The Pittsburgh Survey is no superficial comment. It dives deep 
into the lives of common men." — Collier's Weekly. 

Address CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 

105 east 2 2D STREET, NEW YORK 
158 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO 



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One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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